



Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networking                            E. Kline
Internet-Draft                                 Aalyria Technologies, LLC
Intended status: Informational                           4 November 2025
Expires: 8 May 2026


                The ipn.arpa Zone and IPN DNS Operations
                        draft-ek-dtn-ipn-arpa-00

Abstract

   This document requests a DNS parent for IPN addresses, discusses the
   registration procedures and management of the DNS zone, as well as
   some operational recommendations.  This document specifies that IPN
   addresses may have a DNS representation of the form
   1.978879.ipn.arpa, for IPN node 1 under IPN Allocator 978879.

   This document also describes how this DNS structure can be useful in
   locating the Bundle Protocol (BP) Convergence Layer (CL) endpoint(s)
   of the BP Agent responsible for a given IPN address.

About This Document

   This note is to be removed before publishing as an RFC.

   The latest revision of this draft can be found at
   https://ekline.github.io/draft-dtn-ipn-arpa/draft-ek-dtn-ipn-
   arpa.html.  Status information for this document may be found at
   https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ek-dtn-ipn-arpa/.

   Discussion of this document takes place on the Delay/Disruption
   Tolerant Networking mailing list (mailto:dtn@ietf.org), which is
   archived at https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/dtn/.  Subscribe
   at https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/dtn/.

   Source for this draft and an issue tracker can be found at
   https://github.com/ekline/draft-dtn-ipn-arpa.

Status of This Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
   Task Force (IETF).  Note that other groups may also distribute
   working documents as Internet-Drafts.  The list of current Internet-
   Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.




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Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2025 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

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Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Conventions and Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  Concept of Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   4.  Operational Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   5.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   6.  IAB Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   7.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     7.1.  'ipn' Allocator Registry List of Nameservers  . . . . . .   5
     7.2.  Guidance to Designate Experts . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   8.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     8.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     8.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   Author's Address  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6

1.  Introduction

   TODO Introduction










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2.  Conventions and Definitions

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
   "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in
   BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
   capitals, as shown here.

   TODO

3.  Concept of Operations

   The Forwarding Information Base (FIB) of a BP Agent may be populated
   from a variety of sources.  Typically, explicit (manual)
   configuration is given to associate BP destination endpoints with the
   Convergence Layer parameters required to establish communication with
   a responsible receiving BP Agent.

   A BP Agent may also dynamically create a FIB entry by querying for
   DNS Resource Records as follows.

   Consider a space agency with a registered IPN Allocator ID of 978879
   that published the following two DNS zones:

   ; zone 978879.ipn.arpa.
   @   IN SOA ns1.space-agency.example ...
   1   IN PTR lunar-orbiter1.space-agency.example.
   2   IN PTR mars-orbiter2.space-agency.example.
   500 IN PTR research-department.space-agency.example.


   ; zone space-agency.example.
   @ IN SOA ns1.space-agency.example ...

   antenna-relay IN A 192.0.2.1
   antenna-relay IN AAAA 2001:db8::1

   lunar-orbiter1 IN TXT "{'norad-id': '81111'}}"
   _dtn-bundle._tcp.2 IN SRV 1 1 4556 antenna-relay.space-agency.example.

   mars-orbiter2 IN TXT "{'norad-id': '82222'}}"
   _dtn-bundle._udp.2 IN SRV 1 1 4556 antenna-relay.space-agency.example.

   cloud-service IN A 192.0.2.5
   cloud-service IN AAAA 2001:db8::5

   _dtn-bundle._tcp.research-department IN SRV 1 1 4556 cloud-service.space-agency.example.
   _dtn-bundle._udp.research-department IN SRV 1 1 4556 cloud-service.space-agency.example.



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   A BP Agent, perhaps collocated at a landing station, which had
   received a Bundle destined for ipn:978879.500.345 could determine the
   proper TCP and UDP CL IP addresses and ports by:

   *  querying for a PTR record associated with 500.978879.ipn.arpa

   *  (receiving research-department.space-agency.example)

   *  querying for an SRV record associated with _dtn-
      bundle._tcp.research-department.space-agency.example (ditto for
      ._udp)

   *  (receiving port 4556 and hostname cloud-service.space-
      agency.example.)

   *  querying for A and AAAA records for cloud-service.space-
      agency.example.

   *  (receiving 192.0.2.5 and 2001:db8::5)

   The BP Agent at the landing station could then attempt to initiated a
   [TCPCL] or [UDPCL] connection to [2001:db8::5]:4556, for example, and
   attempt to deliver the given Bundle.

   Similarly, a researcher attempting to send a Bundle payload to mars-
   orbiter2.space-agency.example could use a BP Agent capable of
   querying DNS and learning about the [UDPCL] endpoint at
   192.0.2.1:4556.  Once the Bundle had been forwarded to antenna-
   relay.space-agency.example, it would be the antenna-relay's
   responsibility to forward it to the spacecraft.

   Any future CLs that define DNS records (e.g. SVCB records, etc) may
   be added to the space-agency.example zone and, through the use of PTR
   records in the 978879.ipn.arpa zone, be discovered by appropriately
   capable BP agents.

4.  Operational Considerations

   TODO Operational

   Note that use of DNS may not be appropriate for all network
   environments.  Any deployments where querying DNS might not align
   with reliability or performance requirements are recommended to
   obtain BP FIB information by other mechanisms (out of scope of this
   document).






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5.  Security Considerations

   TODO Security

6.  IAB Considerations

   The IAB is requested to approve the zone "ipn.arpa" as parent for IPN
   addresses, similar to in-addr.arpa and ip6.arpa "reverse DNS" for
   IPv4 and IPv6 addresses (respectively).

   Per [RFC9758], IPN addresses have an Allocator identifier and an
   allocator-specific identifier (both 32-bit unsigned integers).

7.  IANA Considerations

7.1.  'ipn' Allocator Registry List of Nameservers

   IANA is requested to augment its registration procedures for entries
   in the 'ipn' Scheme URI Allocator Identifiers Registry with a column
   for "Authoritative Nameservers".  Requesters of an Allocator or
   Allocator range MAY provide the IP addresses of DNS nameservers that
   will be considered authoritative for the .ipn.arpa zone for each
   requested Allocator.

7.2.  Guidance to Designate Experts

   TBD: things like make sure there are at least two nameserver IP
   addresses and both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses are given, etc.

8.  References

8.1.  Normative References

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2119>.

   [RFC8174]  Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
              2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
              May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8174>.

8.2.  Informative References

   [RFC9758]  Taylor, R. and E. Birrane III, "Updates to the 'ipn' URI
              Scheme", RFC 9758, DOI 10.17487/RFC9758, May 2025,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9758>.




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   [TCPCL]    Sipos, B., Demmer, M., Ott, J., and S. Perreault, "Delay-
              Tolerant Networking TCP Convergence-Layer Protocol Version
              4", RFC 9174, DOI 10.17487/RFC9174, January 2022,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9174>.

   [UDPCL]    Kruse, H., Jero, S., and S. Ostermann, "Datagram
              Convergence Layers for the Delay- and Disruption-Tolerant
              Networking (DTN) Bundle Protocol and Licklider
              Transmission Protocol (LTP)", RFC 7122,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC7122, March 2014,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7122>.

Acknowledgments

   TODO acknowledge.

Author's Address

   Erik Kline
   Aalyria Technologies, LLC
   Email: ek.ietf@gmail.com






























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