Cloning Domain Name System (DNS) Labels for Fun and Profit
This document describes a method for making one or more Domain Name System (DNS) labels behave in the DNS "as if" they were actually an entirely different label. E.g., the delegee for the example.org zone could define bar.example.org to be a CLONE of foo.example.org. This method is designed to meet the needs of those managing Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) zones that have been determined to be semantically similar, and therefore should be treated "as if" they were identical. This method can also be used more generally to handle situations where currently either CNAME or DNAME Resource Records are being used. A key design goal for the CLONE method is that except for DNSSEC support all of the semantic benefits are available by updating the authoritative servers for the zone. Therefore unless DNSSEC support for the CLONEd zones is required there is no dependency on end users being behind a CLONE-Aware resolving name server. Foreword [RFC Editor, please remove this Section at publication time. Thanks.] This is my first draft, please be gentle. :) I'm definitely open to the possibility that there are better ways to accomplish the concepts presented herein. I'm sure that there are a non-zero number of errors in the formatting, references, etc. Also Sections 2 and 3 may be under-specified, unclear, or unworkable. So please don't be afraid to offer (constructive) criticism. TODO: Update/add/improve references? Add/improve examples? Revision History: 1. -00 Initial version