Internet DRAFT - draft-ietf-dnsop-dns-capture-format
draft-ietf-dnsop-dns-capture-format
dnsop J. Dickinson
Internet-Draft J. Hague
Intended status: Standards Track S. Dickinson
Expires: June 15, 2019 Sinodun IT
T. Manderson
J. Bond
ICANN
December 12, 2018
C-DNS: A DNS Packet Capture Format
draft-ietf-dnsop-dns-capture-format-10
Abstract
This document describes a data representation for collections of DNS
messages. The format is designed for efficient storage and
transmission of large packet captures of DNS traffic; it attempts to
minimize the size of such packet capture files but retain the full
DNS message contents along with the most useful transport metadata.
It is intended to assist with the development of DNS traffic
monitoring applications.
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/.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on June 15, 2019.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2018 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3. Data collection use cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4. Design considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
5. Choice of CBOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
6. C-DNS format conceptual overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
6.1. Block Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
6.2. Storage Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
6.2.1. Optional data items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
6.2.2. Optional RRs and OPCODEs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
6.2.3. Storage flags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
6.2.4. IP Address storage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
7. C-DNS format detailed description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
7.1. Map quantities and indexes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
7.2. Tabular representation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
7.3. "File" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
7.4. "FilePreamble" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
7.4.1. "BlockParameters" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
7.4.2. "CollectionParameters" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
7.5. "Block" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
7.5.1. "BlockPreamble" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
7.5.2. "BlockStatistics" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
7.5.3. "BlockTables" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
7.6. "QueryResponse" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
7.6.1. "ResponseProcessingData" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
7.6.2. "QueryResponseExtended" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
7.7. "AddressEventCount" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
7.8. "MalformedMessage" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
8. Versioning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
9. C-DNS to PCAP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
9.1. Name compression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
10. Data collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
10.1. Matching algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
10.2. Message identifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
10.2.1. Primary ID (required) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
10.2.2. Secondary ID (optional) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
10.3. Algorithm parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
10.4. Algorithm requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
10.5. Algorithm limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
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10.6. Workspace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
10.7. Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
10.8. Post processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
11. Implementation guidance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
11.1. Optional data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
11.2. Trailing bytes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
11.3. Limiting collection of RDATA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
11.4. Timestamps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
12. Implementation status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
12.1. DNS-STATS Compactor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
13. IANA considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
13.1. Transport types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
13.2. Data storage flags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
13.3. Response processing flags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
13.4. AddressEvent types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
14. Security considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
15. Privacy considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
16. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
17. Changelog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
18. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
18.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
18.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
18.3. URIs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Appendix A. CDDL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Appendix B. DNS Name compression example . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
B.1. NSD compression algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
B.2. Knot Authoritative compression algorithm . . . . . . . . 70
B.3. Observed differences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
Appendix C. Comparison of Binary Formats . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
C.1. Comparison with full PCAP files . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
C.2. Simple versus block coding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
C.3. Binary versus text formats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
C.4. Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
C.5. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
C.6. Block size choice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
1. Introduction
There has long been a need for server operators to collect DNS
queries and responses on authoritative and recursive name servers for
monitoring and analysis. This data is used in a number of ways
including traffic monitoring, analyzing network attacks and "day in
the life" (DITL) [ditl] analysis.
A wide variety of tools already exist that facilitate the collection
of DNS traffic data, such as DSC [dsc], packetq [packetq], dnscap
[dnscap] and dnstap [dnstap]. However, there is no standard exchange
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format for large DNS packet captures. The PCAP [pcap] or PCAP-NG
[pcapng] formats are typically used in practice for packet captures,
but these file formats can contain a great deal of additional
information that is not directly pertinent to DNS traffic analysis
and thus unnecessarily increases the capture file size. Additionally
these tools and formats typically have no filter mechanism to
selectively record only certain fields at capture time, requiring
post-processing for anonymization or pseudonymization of data to
protect user privacy.
There has also been work on using text based formats to describe DNS
packets such as [I-D.daley-dnsxml], [RFC8427], but these are largely
aimed at producing convenient representations of single messages.
Many DNS operators may receive hundreds of thousands of queries per
second on a single name server instance so a mechanism to minimize
the storage and transmission size (and therefore upload overhead) of
the data collected is highly desirable.
The format described in this document, C-DNS (Compacted-DNS),
focusses on the problem of capturing and storing large packet capture
files of DNS traffic with the following goals in mind:
o Minimize the file size for storage and transmission.
o Minimize the overhead of producing the packet capture file and the
cost of any further (general purpose) compression of the file.
This document contains:
o A discussion of some common use cases in which DNS data is
collected, see Section 3.
o A discussion of the major design considerations in developing an
efficient data representation for collections of DNS messages, see
Section 4.
o A description of why CBOR [RFC7049] was chosen for this format,
see Section 5.
o A conceptual overview of the C-DNS format, see Section 6.
o The definition of the C-DNS format for the collection of DNS
messages, see Section 7.
o Notes on converting C-DNS data to PCAP format, see Section 9.
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o Some high level implementation considerations for applications
designed to produce C-DNS, see Section 10.
2. Terminology
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.
"Packet" refers to an individual IPv4 or IPv6 packet. Typically
packets are UDP datagrams, but may also be part of a TCP data stream.
"Message", unless otherwise qualified, refers to a DNS payload
extracted from a UDP datagram or a TCP data stream.
The parts of DNS messages are named as they are in [RFC1035].
Specifically, the DNS message has five sections: Header, Question,
Answer, Authority, and Additional.
Pairs of DNS messages are called a Query and a Response.
3. Data collection use cases
From a purely server operator perspective, collecting full packet
captures of all packets going in or out of a name server provides the
most comprehensive picture of network activity. However, there are
several design choices or other limitations that are common to many
DNS installations and operators.
o DNS servers are hosted in a variety of situations:
* Self-hosted servers
* Third party hosting (including multiple third parties)
* Third party hardware (including multiple third parties)
o Data is collected under different conditions:
* On well-provisioned servers running in a steady state
* On heavily loaded servers
* On virtualized servers
* On servers that are under DoS attack
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* On servers that are unwitting intermediaries in DoS attacks
o Traffic can be collected via a variety of mechanisms:
* Within the name server implementation itself
* On the same hardware as the name server itself
* Using a network tap on an adjacent host to listen to DNS
traffic
* Using port mirroring to listen from another host
o The capabilities of data collection (and upload) networks vary:
* Out-of-band networks with the same capacity as the in-band
network
* Out-of-band networks with less capacity than the in-band
network
* Everything being on the in-band network
Thus, there is a wide range of use cases from very limited data
collection environments (third party hardware, servers that are under
attack, packet capture on the name server itself and no out-of-band
network) to "limitless" environments (self hosted, well provisioned
servers, using a network tap or port mirroring with an out-of-band
networks with the same capacity as the in-band network). In the
former, it is infeasible to reliably collect full packet captures,
especially if the server is under attack. In the latter case,
collection of full packet captures may be reasonable.
As a result of these restrictions, the C-DNS data format is designed
with the most limited use case in mind such that:
o data collection will occur on the same hardware as the name server
itself
o collected data will be stored on the same hardware as the name
server itself, at least temporarily
o collected data being returned to some central analysis system will
use the same network interface as the DNS queries and responses
o there can be multiple third party servers involved
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Because of these considerations, a major factor in the design of the
format is minimal storage size of the capture files.
Another significant consideration for any application that records
DNS traffic is that the running of the name server software and the
transmission of DNS queries and responses are the most important jobs
of a name server; capturing data is not. Any data collection system
co-located with the name server needs to be intelligent enough to
carefully manage its CPU, disk, memory and network utilization. This
leads to designing a format that requires a relatively low overhead
to produce and minimizes the requirement for further potentially
costly compression.
However, it is also essential that interoperability with less
restricted infrastructure is maintained. In particular, it is highly
desirable that the collection format should facilitate the re-
creation of common formats (such as PCAP) that are as close to the
original as is realistic given the restrictions above.
4. Design considerations
This section presents some of the major design considerations used in
the development of the C-DNS format.
1. The basic unit of data is a combined DNS Query and the associated
Response (a "Q/R data item"). The same structure will be used
for unmatched Queries and Responses. Queries without Responses
will be captured omitting the response data. Responses without
queries will be captured omitting the Query data (but using the
Question section from the response, if present, as an identifying
QNAME).
* Rationale: A Query and Response represents the basic level of
a client's interaction with the server. Also, combining the
Query and Response into one item often reduces storage
requirements due to commonality in the data of the two
messages.
In the context of generating a C-DNS file it is assumed that only
those DNS payloads which can be parsed to produce a well-formed
DNS message are stored in the C-DNS format and that all other
messages will be (optionally) recorded as malformed messages.
Parsing a well-formed message means as a minimum:
* The packet has a well-formed 12 byte DNS Header with a
recognised OPCODE.
* The section counts are consistent with the section contents.
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* All of the resource records can be fully parsed.
2. All top level fields in each Q/R data item will be optional.
* Rationale: Different operators will have different
requirements for data to be available for analysis. Operators
with minimal requirements should not have to pay the cost of
recording full data, though this will limit the ability to
perform certain kinds of data analysis and also to reconstruct
packet captures. For example, omitting the resource records
from a Response will reduce the C-DNS file size; in principle
responses can be synthesized if there is enough context.
Operators may have different policies for collecting user data
and can choose to omit or anonymize certain fields at capture
time e.g. client address.
3. Multiple Q/R data items will be collected into blocks in the
format. Common data in a block will be abstracted and referenced
from individual Q/R data items by indexing. The maximum number
of Q/R data items in a block will be configurable.
* Rationale: This blocking and indexing provides a significant
reduction in the volume of file data generated. Although this
introduces complexity, it provides compression of the data
that makes use of knowledge of the DNS message structure.
* It is anticipated that the files produced can be subject to
further compression using general purpose compression tools.
Measurements show that blocking significantly reduces the CPU
required to perform such strong compression. See
Appendix C.2.
* Examples of commonality between DNS messages are that in most
cases the QUESTION RR is the same in the query and response,
and that there is a finite set of query signatures (based on a
subset of attributes). For many authoritative servers there
is very likely to be a finite set of responses that are
generated, of which a large number are NXDOMAIN.
4. Traffic metadata can optionally be included in each block.
Specifically, counts of some types of non-DNS packets (e.g.
ICMP, TCP resets) sent to the server may be of interest.
5. The wire format content of malformed DNS messages may optionally
be recorded.
* Rationale: Any structured capture format that does not capture
the DNS payload byte for byte will be limited to some extent
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in that it cannot represent malformed DNS messages. Only
those messages that can be fully parsed and transformed into
the structured format can be fully represented. Note,
however, this can result in rather misleading statistics. For
example, a malformed query which cannot be represented in the
C-DNS format will lead to the (well formed) DNS responses with
error code FORMERR appearing as 'unmatched'. Therefore it can
greatly aid downstream analysis to have the wire format of the
malformed DNS messages available directly in the C-DNS file.
5. Choice of CBOR
This document presents a detailed format description using CBOR, the
Concise Binary Object Representation defined in [RFC7049].
The choice of CBOR was made taking a number of factors into account.
o CBOR is a binary representation, and thus is economical in storage
space.
o Other binary representations were investigated, and whilst all had
attractive features, none had a significant advantage over CBOR.
See Appendix C for some discussion of this.
o CBOR is an IETF specification and familiar to IETF participants.
It is based on the now-common ideas of lists and objects, and thus
requires very little familiarization for those in the wider
industry.
o CBOR is a simple format, and can easily be implemented from
scratch if necessary. More complex formats require library
support which may present problems on unusual platforms.
o CBOR can also be easily converted to text formats such as JSON
([RFC8259]) for debugging and other human inspection requirements.
o CBOR data schemas can be described using CDDL
[I-D.ietf-cbor-cddl].
6. C-DNS format conceptual overview
The following figures show purely schematic representations of the
C-DNS format to convey the high-level structure of the C-DNS format.
Section 7 provides a detailed discussion of the CBOR representation
and individual elements.
Figure 1 shows the C-DNS format at the top level including the file
header and data blocks. The Query/Response data items, Address/Event
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Count data items and Malformed Message data items link to various
Block tables.
+-------+
+ C-DNS |
+-------+--------------------------+
| File type identifier |
+----------------------------------+
| File preamble |
| +--------------------------------+
| | Format version info |
| +--------------------------------+
| | Block parameters |
+-+--------------------------------+
| Block |
| +--------------------------------+
| | Block preamble |
| +--------------------------------+
| | Block statistics |
| +--------------------------------+
| | Block tables |
| +--------------------------------+
| | Query/Response data items |
| +--------------------------------+
| | Address/Event Count data items |
| +--------------------------------+
| | Malformed Message data items |
+-+--------------------------------+
| Block |
| +--------------------------------+
| | Block preamble |
| +--------------------------------+
| | Block statistics |
| +--------------------------------+
| | Block tables |
| +--------------------------------+
| | Query/Response data items |
| +--------------------------------+
| | Address/Event Count data items |
| +--------------------------------+
| | Malformed Message data items |
+-+--------------------------------+
| Further Blocks... |
+----------------------------------+
Figure 1: The C-DNS format.
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Figure 2 shows some more detailed relationships within each block,
specifically those between the Query/Response data item and the
relevant Block tables.
+----------------+
| Query/Response |
+-------------------------+
| Time offset |
+-------------------------+ +------------------+
| Client address |------------>| IP address array |
+-------------------------+ +------------------+
| Client port |
+-------------------------+ +------------------+
| Transaction ID | +------>| Name/RDATA array |<------+
+-------------------------+ | +------------------+ |
| Query signature |--+ | |
+-------------------------+ | | +-----------------+ |
| Client hoplimit (q) | +--)------>| Query Signature | |
+-------------------------+ | +-----------------+------+ |
| Response delay (r) | | | Server address | |
+-------------------------+ | +------------------------+ |
| Query name |--+--+ | Server port | |
+-------------------------+ | +------------------------+ |
| Query size (q) | | | Transport flags | |
+-------------------------+ | +------------------------+ |
| Response size (r) | | | QR type | |
+-------------------------+ | +------------------------+ |
| Response processing (r) | | | QR signature flags | |
| +-----------------------+ | +------------------------+ |
| | Bailiwick index |--+ | Query OPCODE (q) | |
| +-----------------------+ +------------------------+ |
| | Flags | | QR DNS flags | |
+-+-----------------------+ +------------------------+ |
| Extra query info (q) | | Query RCODE (q) | |
| +-----------------------+ +------------------------+ |
| | Question |--+---+ +--+-Query Class/Type (q) | |
| +-----------------------+ | | +------------------------+ |
| | Answer |--+ | | | Query QD count (q) | |
| +-----------------------+ | | | +------------------------+ |
| | Authority |--+ | | | Query AN count (q) | |
| +-----------------------+ | | | +------------------------+ |
| | Additional |--+ | | | Query NS count (q) | |
+-+-----------------------+ | | | +------------------------+ |
| Extra response info (r) | |-+ | | | Query EDNS version (q) | |
| +-----------------------+ | | | | +------------------------+ |
| | Answer |--+ | | | | EDNS UDP size (q) | |
| +-----------------------+ | | | | +------------------------+ |
| | Authority |--+ | | | | Query Opt RDATA (q) | |
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| +-----------------------+ | | | | +------------------------+ |
| | Additional |--+ | | | | Response RCODE (r) | |
+-+-----------------------+ | | | +------------------------+ |
| | | |
| | | |
+ -----------------------------+ | +----------+ |
| | | |
| + -----------------------------+ | |
| | +---------------+ +----------+ | |
| +->| Question list |->| Question | | |
| | array | | array | | |
| +---------------+ +----------+--+ | |
| | Name |--+------)------------------+
| +-------------+ | | +------------+
| | Class/type |--)---+--+->| Class/Type |
| +-------------+ | | | array |
| | | +------------+--+
| | | | Class |
| +---------------+ +----------+ | | +---------------+
+--->| RR list array |->| RR array | | | | Type |
+---------+-----+ +----------+--+ | | +---------------+
| Name |--+ |
+-------------+ |
| Class/type |------+
+-------------+
Figure 2: The Query/Response data item and subsidiary tables.
In Figure 2 data items annotated (q) are only present when a query/
response has a query, and those annotated (r) are only present when a
query/response response is present.
A C-DNS file begins with a file header containing a File Type
Identifier and a File Preamble. The File Preamble contains
information on the file Format Version and an array of Block
Parameters items (the contents of which include Collection and
Storage Parameters used for one or more blocks).
The file header is followed by a series of data Blocks.
A Block consists of a Block Preamble item, some Block Statistics for
the traffic stored within the Block and then various arrays of common
data collectively called the Block Tables. This is then followed by
an array of the Query/Response data items detailing the queries and
responses stored within the Block. The array of Query/Response data
items is in turn followed by the Address/Event Counts data items (an
array of per-client counts of particular IP events) and then
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Malformed Message data items (an array of malformed messages that
stored in the Block).
The exact nature of the DNS data will affect what block size is the
best fit, however sample data for a root server indicated that block
sizes up to 10,000 Q/R data items give good results. See
Appendix C.6 for more details.
This design exploits data commonality and block based storage to
minimise the C-DNS file size. As a result C-DNS cannot be streamed
below the level of a block.
6.1. Block Parameters
The details of the Block Parameters items are not shown in the
diagrams but are discussed here for context.
An array of Block Parameters items is stored in the File Preamble
(with a minimum of one item at index 0); a Block Parameters item
consists of a collection of Storage and Collection Parameters that
applies to any given Block. An array is used in order to support use
cases such as wanting to merge C-DNS files from different sources.
The Block Preamble item then contains an optional index for the Block
Parameters item that applies for that Block; if not present the index
defaults to 0. Hence, in effect, a global Block Parameters item is
defined which can then be overridden per Block.
6.2. Storage Parameters
The Block Parameters item includes a Storage Parameters item - this
contains information about the specific data fields stored in the
C-DNS file.
These parameters include:
o The sub-second timing resolution used by the data.
o Information (hints) on which optional data are omitted. See
Section 6.2.1.
o Recorded OPCODES [opcodes] and RR types [rrtypes]. See
Section 6.2.2.
o Flags indicating, for example, whether the data is sampled or
anonymized. See Section 6.2.3 and Section 15.
o Client and server IPv4 and IPv6 address prefixes. See
Section 6.2.4
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6.2.1. Optional data items
To enable implementations to store data to their precise requirements
in as space-efficient manner as possible, all fields in the following
arrays are optional:
o Query/Response
o Query Signature
o Malformed messages
In other words, an implementation can choose to omit any data item
that is not required for its use case. In addition, implementations
may be configured to not record all RRs, or only record messages with
certain OPCODES.
This does, however, mean that a consumer of a C-DNS file faces two
problems:
1. How can it quickly determine if a file definitely does not
contain the data items it requires to complete a particular task
(e.g. reconstructing query traffic or performing a specific piece
of data analysis)?
2. How can it determine if a data item is not present because it
was:
* explicitly not recorded or
* the data item was not available/present.
For example, capturing C-DNS data from within a nameserver
implementation makes it unlikely that the Client Hoplimit can be
recorded. Or, if there is no query ARCount recorded and no query OPT
RDATA [RFC6891] recorded, is that because no query contained an OPT
RR, or because that data was not stored?
The Storage Parameters therefore also contains a Storage Hints item
which specifies which items the encoder of the file omits from the
stored data and will therefore never be present. (This approach is
taken because a flag that indicated which items were included for
collection would not guarantee that the item was present, only that
it might be.) An implementation decoding that file can then use
these to quickly determine whether the input data is rich enough for
its needs.
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6.2.2. Optional RRs and OPCODEs
Also included in the Storage Parameters are explicit arrays listing
the RR types and the OPCODEs to be recorded. These remove any
ambiguity over whether messages containing particular OPCODEs or are
not present because they did not occur, or because the implementation
is not configured to record them.
In the case of OPCODEs, for a message to be fully parsable, the
OPCODE must be known to the collecting implementation. Any message
with an OPCODE unknown to the collecting implementation cannot be
validated as correctly formed, and so must be treated as malformed.
Messages with OPCODES known to the recording application but not
listed in the Storage Parameters are discarded by the recording
application during C-DNS capture (regardless of whether they are
malformed or not).
In the case of RR records, each record in a message must be fully
parsable, including parsing the record RDATA, as otherwise the
message cannot be validated as correctly formed. Any RR record with
an RR type not known to the collecting implementation cannot be
validated as correctly formed, and so must be treated as malformed.
Once a message is correctly parsed, an implementation is free to
record only a subset of the RR records present.
6.2.3. Storage flags
The Storage Parameters contains flags that can be used to indicate
if:
o the data is anonymized,
o the data is produced from sample data, or
o names in the data have been normalized (converted to uniform
case).
The Storage Parameters also contains optional fields holding details
of the sampling method used and the anonymization method used. It is
RECOMMENDED these fields contain URIs [RFC3986] pointing to resources
describing the methods used. See Section 15 for further discussion
of anonymization and normalization.
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6.2.4. IP Address storage
The format can store either full IP addresses or just IP prefixes,
the Storage Parameters contains fields to indicate if only IP
prefixes were stored.
If the IP address prefixes are absent, then full addresses are
stored. In this case the IP version can be directly inferred from
the stored address length and the fields "qr-transport-flags" in
QueryResponseSignature and "mm-transport-flags" in
MalformedMessageData (which contain the IP version bit) are optional.
If IP address prefixes are given, only the prefix bits of addresses
are stored. In this case the fields "qr-transport-flags" in
QueryResponseSignature and "mm-transport-flags" in
MalformedMessageData MUST be present, so that the IP version can be
determined. See Section 7.5.3.2 and Section 7.5.3.5.
As an example of storing only IP prefixes, if a client IPv6 prefix of
48 is specified, a client address of 2001:db8:85a3::8a2e:370:7334
will be stored as 0x20010db885a3, reducing address storage space
requirements. Similarly, if a client IPv4 prefix of 16 is specified,
a client address of 192.0.2.1 will be stored as 0xc000 (192.0).
7. C-DNS format detailed description
The CDDL definition for the C-DNS format is given in Appendix A.
7.1. Map quantities and indexes
All map keys are integers with values specified in the CDDL. String
keys would significantly bloat the file size.
All key values specified are positive integers under 24, so their
CBOR representation is a single byte. Positive integer values not
currently used as keys in a map are reserved for use in future
standard extensions.
Implementations may choose to add additional implementation-specific
entries to any map. Negative integer map keys are reserved for these
values. Key values from -1 to -24 also have a single byte CBOR
representation, so such implementation-specific extensions are not at
any space efficiency disadvantage.
An item described as an index is the index of the data item in the
referenced array. Indexes are 0-based.
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7.2. Tabular representation
The following sections present the C-DNS specification in tabular
format with a detailed description of each item.
In all quantities that contain bit flags, bit 0 indicates the least
significant bit, i.e. flag "n" in quantity "q" is on if "(q & (1 <<
n)) != 0".
For the sake of readability, all type and field names defined in the
CDDL definition are shown in double quotes. Type names are by
convention camel case (e.g. "BlockTable"), field names are lower-
case with hyphens (e.g. "block-tables").
For the sake of brevity, the following conventions are used in the
tables:
o The column M marks whether items in a map are mandatory.
* X - Mandatory items.
* C - Conditionally mandatory item. Such items are usually
optional but may be mandatory in some configurations.
* If the column is empty, the item is optional.
o The column T gives the CBOR data type of the item.
* U - Unsigned integer
* I - Signed integer (i.e. CBOR unsigned or negative integer)
* B - Boolean
* S - Byte string
* T - Text string
* M - Map
* A - Array
In the case of maps and arrays, more information on the type of each
value, include the CDDL definition name if applicable, is given in
the description.
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7.3. "File"
A C-DNS file has an outer structure "File", a map that contains the
following:
+---------------+---+---+-------------------------------------------+
| Field | M | T | Description |
+---------------+---+---+-------------------------------------------+
| file-type-id | X | T | String "C-DNS" identifying the file type. |
| | | | |
| file-preamble | X | M | Version and parameter information for the |
| | | | whole file. Map of type "FilePreamble", |
| | | | see Section 7.4. |
| | | | |
| file-blocks | X | A | Array of items of type "Block", see |
| | | | Section 7.5. The array may be empty if |
| | | | the file contains no data. |
+---------------+---+---+-------------------------------------------+
7.4. "FilePreamble"
Information about data in the file. A map containing the following:
+----------------------+---+---+------------------------------------+
| Field | M | T | Description |
+----------------------+---+---+------------------------------------+
| major-format-version | X | U | Unsigned integer '1'. The major |
| | | | version of format used in file. |
| | | | See Section 8. |
| | | | |
| minor-format-version | X | U | Unsigned integer '0'. The minor |
| | | | version of format used in file. |
| | | | See Section 8. |
| | | | |
| private-version | | U | Version indicator available for |
| | | | private use by implementations. |
| | | | |
| block-parameters | X | A | Array of items of type |
| | | | "BlockParameters", see Section |
| | | | 7.4.1. The array must contain at |
| | | | least one entry. (The "block- |
| | | | parameters-index" item in each |
| | | | "BlockPreamble" indicates which |
| | | | array entry applies to that |
| | | | "Block".) |
+----------------------+---+---+------------------------------------+
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7.4.1. "BlockParameters"
Parameters relating to data storage and collection which apply to one
or more items of type "Block". A map containing the following:
+-----------------------+---+---+-----------------------------------+
| Field | M | T | Description |
+-----------------------+---+---+-----------------------------------+
| storage-parameters | X | M | Parameters relating to data |
| | | | storage in a "Block" item. Map |
| | | | of type "StorageParameters", see |
| | | | Section 7.4.1.1. |
| | | | |
| collection-parameters | | M | Parameters relating to collection |
| | | | of the data in a "Block" item. |
| | | | Map of type |
| | | | "CollectionParameters", see |
| | | | Section 7.4.2. |
+-----------------------+---+---+-----------------------------------+
7.4.1.1. "StorageParameters"
Parameters relating to how data is stored in the items of type
"Block". A map containing the following:
+------------------+---+---+----------------------------------------+
| Field | M | T | Description |
+------------------+---+---+----------------------------------------+
| ticks-per-second | X | U | Sub-second timing is recorded in |
| | | | ticks. This specifies the number of |
| | | | ticks in a second. |
| | | | |
| max-block-items | X | U | The maximum number of items stored in |
| | | | any of the arrays in a "Block" item |
| | | | (Q/R items, address event counts or |
| | | | malformed messages). An indication to |
| | | | a decoder of the resources needed to |
| | | | process the file. |
| | | | |
| storage-hints | X | M | Collection of hints as to which fields |
| | | | are omitted in the arrays that have |
| | | | optional fields. Map of type |
| | | | "StorageHints", see Section 7.4.1.1.1. |
| | | | |
| opcodes | X | A | Array of OPCODES [opcodes] (unsigned |
| | | | integers, each in the range 0 to 15 |
| | | | inclusive) recorded by the collection |
| | | | implementation. See Section 6.2.2. |
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| | | | |
| rr-types | X | A | Array of RR types [rrtypes] (unsigned |
| | | | integers, each in the range 0 to 65535 |
| | | | inclusive) recorded by the collection |
| | | | implementation. See Section 6.2.2. |
| | | | |
| storage-flags | | U | Bit flags indicating attributes of |
| | | | stored data. |
| | | | Bit 0. 1 if the data has been |
| | | | anonymized. |
| | | | Bit 1. 1 if the data is sampled data. |
| | | | Bit 2. 1 if the names have been |
| | | | normalized (converted to uniform |
| | | | case). |
| | | | |
| client-address | | U | IPv4 client address prefix length, in |
| -prefix-ipv4 | | | the range 1 to 32 inclusive. If |
| | | | specified, only the address prefix |
| | | | bits are stored. |
| | | | |
| client-address | | U | IPv6 client address prefix length, in |
| -prefix-ipv6 | | | the range 1 to 128 inclusive. If |
| | | | specified, only the address prefix |
| | | | bits are stored. |
| | | | |
| server-address | | U | IPv4 server address prefix length, in |
| -prefix-ipv4 | | | the range 1 to 32 inclusive. If |
| | | | specified, only the address prefix |
| | | | bits are stored. |
| | | | |
| server-address | | U | IPv6 server address prefix length, in |
| -prefix-ipv6 | | | the range 1 to 128 inclusive. If |
| | | | specified, only the address prefix |
| | | | bits are stored. |
| | | | |
| sampling-method | | T | Information on the sampling method |
| | | | used. See Section 6.2.3. |
| | | | |
| anonymization | | T | Information on the anonymization |
| -method | | | method used. See Section 6.2.3. |
+------------------+---+---+----------------------------------------+
7.4.1.1.1. "StorageHints"
An indicator of which fields the collecting implementation omits in
the maps with optional fields. A map containing the following:
+------------------+---+---+----------------------------------------+
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| Field | M | T | Description |
+------------------+---+---+----------------------------------------+
| query-response | X | U | Hints indicating which "QueryResponse" |
| -hints | | | fields are candidates for capture or |
| | | | omitted, see section Section 7.6. If a |
| | | | bit is unset, the field is omitted |
| | | | from the capture. |
| | | | Bit 0. time-offset |
| | | | Bit 1. client-address-index |
| | | | Bit 2. client-port |
| | | | Bit 3. transaction-id |
| | | | Bit 4. qr-signature-index |
| | | | Bit 5. client-hoplimit |
| | | | Bit 6. response-delay |
| | | | Bit 7. query-name-index |
| | | | Bit 8. query-size |
| | | | Bit 9. response-size |
| | | | Bit 10. response-processing-data |
| | | | Bit 11. query-question-sections |
| | | | Bit 12. query-answer-sections |
| | | | Bit 13. query-authority-sections |
| | | | Bit 14. query-additional-sections |
| | | | Bit 15. response-answer-sections |
| | | | Bit 16. response-authority-sections |
| | | | Bit 17. response-additional-sections |
| | | | |
| query-response | X | U | Hints indicating which |
| -signature-hints | | | "QueryResponseSignature" fields are |
| | | | candidates for capture or omitted, see |
| | | | section Section 7.5.3.2. If a bit is |
| | | | unset, the field is omitted from the |
| | | | capture. |
| | | | Bit 0. server-address |
| | | | Bit 1. server-port |
| | | | Bit 2. qr-transport-flags |
| | | | Bit 3. qr-type |
| | | | Bit 4. qr-sig-flags |
| | | | Bit 5. query-opcode |
| | | | Bit 6. dns-flags |
| | | | Bit 7. query-rcode |
| | | | Bit 8. query-class-type |
| | | | Bit 9. query-qdcount |
| | | | Bit 10. query-ancount |
| | | | Bit 11. query-nscount |
| | | | Bit 12. query-arcount |
| | | | Bit 13. query-edns-version |
| | | | Bit 14. query-udp-size |
| | | | Bit 15. query-opt-rdata |
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| | | | Bit 16. response-rcode |
| | | | |
| rr-hints | X | U | Hints indicating which optional "RR" |
| | | | fields are candidates for capture or |
| | | | omitted, see Section 7.5.3.4. If a bit |
| | | | is unset, the field is omitted from |
| | | | the capture. |
| | | | Bit 0. ttl |
| | | | Bit 1. rdata-index |
| other-data-hints | X | U | Hints indicating which other data |
| | | | types are omitted. If a bit is unset, |
| | | | the the data type is omitted from the |
| | | | capture. |
| | | | Bit 0. malformed-messages |
| | | | Bit 1. address-event-counts |
+------------------+---+---+----------------------------------------+
7.4.2. "CollectionParameters"
Parameters providing information to how data in the file was
collected (applicable for some, but not all collection environments).
The values are informational only and serve as hints to downstream
analysers as to the configuration of a collecting implementation.
They can provide context when interpreting what data is present/
absent from the capture but cannot necessarily be validated against
the data captured.
These parameters have no default. If they do not appear, nothing can
be inferred about their value.
A map containing the following items:
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+------------------+---+---+----------------------------------------+
| Field | M | T | Description |
+------------------+---+---+----------------------------------------+
| query-timeout | | U | To be matched with a query, a response |
| | | | must arrive within this number of |
| | | | seconds. |
| | | | |
| skew-timeout | | U | The network stack may report a |
| | | | response before the corresponding |
| | | | query. A response is not considered to |
| | | | be missing a query until after this |
| | | | many micro-seconds. |
| | | | |
| snaplen | | U | Collect up to this many bytes per |
| | | | packet. |
| | | | |
| promisc | | B | "true" if promiscuous mode |
| | | | [pcap-options] was enabled on the |
| | | | interface, "false" otherwise. |
| | | | |
| interfaces | | A | Array of identifiers (of type text |
| | | | string) of the interfaces used for |
| | | | collection. |
| | | | |
| server-addresses | | A | Array of server collection IP |
| | | | addresses (of type byte string). Hint |
| | | | for downstream analysers; does not |
| | | | affect collection. |
| | | | |
| vlan-ids | | A | Array of identifiers (of type unsigned |
| | | | integer, each in the range 1 to 4094 |
| | | | inclusive) of VLANs [IEEE802.1Q] |
| | | | selected for collection. VLAN IDs are |
| | | | unique only within an administrative |
| | | | domain. |
| | | | |
| filter | | T | "tcpdump" [pcap-filter] style filter |
| | | | for input. |
| | | | |
| generator-id | | T | Implementation specific human-readable |
| | | | string identifying the collection |
| | | | method. |
| | | | |
| host-id | | T | String identifying the collecting |
| | | | host. Empty if converting an existing |
| | | | packet capture file. |
+------------------+---+---+----------------------------------------+
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7.5. "Block"
Container for data with common collection and storage parameters. A
map containing the following:
+--------------------+---+---+--------------------------------------+
| Field | M | T | Description |
+--------------------+---+---+--------------------------------------+
| block-preamble | X | M | Overall information for the "Block" |
| | | | item. Map of type "BlockPreamble", |
| | | | see Section 7.5.1. |
| | | | |
| block-statistics | | M | Statistics about the "Block" item. |
| | | | Map of type "BlockStatistics", see |
| | | | Section 7.5.2. |
| | | | |
| block-tables | | M | The arrays containing data |
| | | | referenced by individual |
| | | | "QueryResponse" or |
| | | | "MalformedMessage" items. Map of |
| | | | type "BlockTables", see Section |
| | | | 7.5.3. |
| | | | |
| query-responses | | A | Details of individual DNS Q/R data |
| | | | items. Array of items of type |
| | | | "QueryResponse", see Section 7.6. If |
| | | | present, the array must not be |
| | | | empty. |
| | | | |
| address-event | | A | Per client counts of ICMP messages |
| -counts | | | and TCP resets. Array of items of |
| | | | type "AddressEventCount", see |
| | | | Section 7.7. If present, the array |
| | | | must not be empty. |
| | | | |
| malformed-messages | | A | Details of malformed DNS messages. |
| | | | Array of items of type |
| | | | "MalformedMessage", see Section 7.8. |
| | | | If present, the array must not be |
| | | | empty. |
+--------------------+---+---+--------------------------------------+
7.5.1. "BlockPreamble"
Overall information for a "Block" item. A map containing the
following:
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+------------------+---+---+----------------------------------------+
| Field | M | T | Description |
+------------------+---+---+----------------------------------------+
| earliest-time | C | A | A timestamp (2 unsigned integers, |
| | | | "Timestamp") for the earliest record |
| | | | in the "Block" item. The first integer |
| | | | is the number of seconds since the |
| | | | POSIX epoch [posix-time] ("time_t"), |
| | | | excluding leap seconds. The second |
| | | | integer is the number of ticks (see |
| | | | Section 7.4.1.1) since the start of |
| | | | the second. This field is mandatory |
| | | | unless all block items containing a |
| | | | time offset from the start of the |
| | | | block also omit that time offset. |
| | | | |
| block-parameters | | U | The index of the item in the "block- |
| -index | | | parameters" array (in the "file- |
| | | | premable" item) applicable to this |
| | | | block. If not present, index 0 is |
| | | | used. See Section 7.4.1. |
+------------------+---+---+----------------------------------------+
7.5.2. "BlockStatistics"
Basic statistical information about a "Block" item. A map containing
the following:
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+---------------------+---+---+-------------------------------------+
| Field | M | T | Description |
+---------------------+---+---+-------------------------------------+
| processed-messages | | U | Total number of DNS messages |
| | | | processed from the input traffic |
| | | | stream during collection of data in |
| | | | this "Block" item. |
| | | | |
| qr-data-items | | U | Total number of Q/R data items in |
| | | | this "Block" item. |
| | | | |
| unmatched-queries | | U | Number of unmatched queries in this |
| | | | "Block" item. |
| | | | |
| unmatched-responses | | U | Number of unmatched responses in |
| | | | this "Block" item. |
| | | | |
| discarded-opcode | | U | Number of DNS messages processed |
| | | | from the input traffic stream |
| | | | during collection of data in this |
| | | | "Block" item but not recorded |
| | | | because their OPCODE is not in the |
| | | | list to be collected. |
| | | | |
| malformed-items | | U | Number of malformed messages found |
| | | | in input for this "Block" item. |
+---------------------+---+---+-------------------------------------+
7.5.3. "BlockTables"
Map of arrays containing data referenced by individual
"QueryResponse" or "MalformedMessage" items in this "Block". Each
element is an array which, if present, must not be empty.
An item in the "qlist" array contains indexes to values in the "qrr"
array. Therefore, if "qlist" is present, "qrr" must also be present.
Similarly, if "rrlist" is present, "rr" must also be present.
The map contains the following items:
+-------------------+---+---+---------------------------------------+
| Field | M | T | Description |
+-------------------+---+---+---------------------------------------+
| ip-address | | A | Array of IP addresses, in network |
| | | | byte order (of type byte string). If |
| | | | client or server address prefixes are |
| | | | set, only the address prefix bits are |
| | | | stored. Each string is therefore up |
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| | | | to 4 bytes long for an IPv4 address, |
| | | | or up to 16 bytes long for an IPv6 |
| | | | address. See Section 7.4.1.1. |
| | | | |
| classtype | | A | Array of RR class and type |
| | | | information. Type is "ClassType", see |
| | | | Section 7.5.3.1. |
| | | | |
| name-rdata | | A | Array where each entry is the |
| | | | contents of a single NAME or RDATA in |
| | | | wire format (of type byte string). |
| | | | Note that NAMEs, and labels within |
| | | | RDATA contents, are full domain names |
| | | | or labels; no [RFC1035] name |
| | | | compression is used on the individual |
| | | | names/labels within the format. |
| | | | |
| qr-sig | | A | Array Q/R data item signatures. Type |
| | | | is "QueryResponseSignature", see |
| | | | Section 7.5.3.2. |
| | | | |
| qlist | | A | Array of type "QuestionList". A |
| | | | "QuestionList" is an array of |
| | | | unsigned integers, indexes to |
| | | | "Question" items in the "qrr" array. |
| | | | |
| qrr | | A | Array of type "Question". Each entry |
| | | | is the contents of a single question, |
| | | | where a question is the second or |
| | | | subsequent question in a query. See |
| | | | Section 7.5.3.3. |
| | | | |
| rrlist | | A | Array of type "RRList". An "RRList" |
| | | | is an array of unsigned integers, |
| | | | indexes to "RR" items in the "rr" |
| | | | array. |
| | | | |
| rr | | A | Array of type "RR". Each entry is the |
| | | | contents of a single RR. See Section |
| | | | 7.5.3.4. |
| | | | |
| malformed-message | | A | Array of the contents of malformed |
| -data | | | messages. Array of type |
| | | | "MalformedMessageData", see Section |
| | | | 7.5.3.5. |
+-------------------+---+---+---------------------------------------+
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7.5.3.1. "ClassType"
RR class and type information. A map containing the following:
+-------+---+---+--------------------------+
| Field | M | T | Description |
+-------+---+---+--------------------------+
| type | X | U | TYPE value [rrtypes]. |
| | | | |
| class | X | U | CLASS value [rrclasses]. |
+-------+---+---+--------------------------+
7.5.3.2. "QueryResponseSignature"
Elements of a Q/R data item that are often common between multiple
individual Q/R data items. A map containing the following:
+--------------------+---+---+--------------------------------------+
| Field | M | T | Description |
+--------------------+---+---+--------------------------------------+
| server-address | | U | The index in the item in the "ip- |
| -index | | | address" array of the server IP |
| | | | address. See Section 7.5.3. |
| | | | |
| server-port | | U | The server port. |
| | | | |
| qr-transport-flags | C | U | Bit flags describing the transport |
| | | | used to service the query. Same |
| | | | definition as "mm-transport-flags" |
| | | | in Section 7.5.3.5, with an |
| | | | additional indicator for trailing |
| | | | bytes, see Appendix A. |
| | | | Bit 0. IP version. 0 if IPv4, 1 if |
| | | | IPv6. See Section 6.2.4. |
| | | | Bit 1-4. Transport. 4 bit unsigned |
| | | | value where 0 = UDP, 1 = TCP, 2 = |
| | | | TLS, 3 = DTLS [RFC7858], 4 = DoH |
| | | | [RFC8484]. Values 5-15 are reserved |
| | | | for future use. |
| | | | Bit 5. 1 if trailing bytes in query |
| | | | packet. See Section 11.2. |
| | | | |
| qr-type | | U | Type of Query/Response transaction. |
| | | | 0 = Stub. A query from a stub |
| | | | resolver. |
| | | | 1 = Client. An incoming query to a |
| | | | recursive resolver. |
| | | | 2 = Resolver. A query sent from a |
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| | | | recursive resolver to an authorative |
| | | | resolver. |
| | | | 3 = Authorative. A query to an |
| | | | authorative resolver. |
| | | | 4 = Forwarder. A query sent from a |
| | | | recursive resolver to an upstream |
| | | | recursive resolver. |
| | | | 5 = Tool. A query sent to a server |
| | | | by a server tool. |
| | | | |
| qr-sig-flags | | U | Bit flags explicitly indicating |
| | | | attributes of the message pair |
| | | | represented by this Q/R data item |
| | | | (not all attributes may be recorded |
| | | | or deducible). |
| | | | Bit 0. 1 if a Query was present. |
| | | | Bit 1. 1 if a Response was present. |
| | | | Bit 2. 1 if a Query was present and |
| | | | it had an OPT Resource Record. |
| | | | Bit 3. 1 if a Response was present |
| | | | and it had an OPT Resource Record. |
| | | | Bit 4. 1 if a Query was present but |
| | | | had no Question. |
| | | | Bit 5. 1 if a Response was present |
| | | | but had no Question (only one query- |
| | | | name-index is stored per Q/R item). |
| | | | |
| query-opcode | | U | Query OPCODE. |
| | | | |
| qr-dns-flags | | U | Bit flags with values from the Query |
| | | | and Response DNS flags. Flag values |
| | | | are 0 if the Query or Response is |
| | | | not present. |
| | | | Bit 0. Query Checking Disabled (CD). |
| | | | Bit 1. Query Authenticated Data |
| | | | (AD). |
| | | | Bit 2. Query reserved (Z). |
| | | | Bit 3. Query Recursion Available |
| | | | (RA). |
| | | | Bit 4. Query Recursion Desired (RD). |
| | | | Bit 5. Query TrunCation (TC). |
| | | | Bit 6. Query Authoritative Answer |
| | | | (AA). |
| | | | Bit 7. Query DNSSEC answer OK (DO). |
| | | | Bit 8. Response Checking Disabled |
| | | | (CD). |
| | | | Bit 9. Response Authenticated Data |
| | | | (AD). |
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| | | | Bit 10. Response reserved (Z). |
| | | | Bit 11. Response Recursion Available |
| | | | (RA). |
| | | | Bit 12. Response Recursion Desired |
| | | | (RD). |
| | | | Bit 13. Response TrunCation (TC). |
| | | | Bit 14. Response Authoritative |
| | | | Answer (AA). |
| | | | |
| query-rcode | | U | Query RCODE. If the Query contains |
| | | | OPT [RFC6891], this value |
| | | | incorporates any |
| | | | EXTENDED_RCODE_VALUE [rcodes]. |
| | | | |
| query-classtype | | U | The index to the item in the the |
| -index | | | "classtype" array of the CLASS and |
| | | | TYPE of the first Question. See |
| | | | Section 7.5.3. |
| | | | |
| query-qd-count | | U | The QDCOUNT in the Query, or |
| | | | Response if no Query present. |
| | | | |
| query-an-count | | U | Query ANCOUNT. |
| | | | |
| query-ns-count | | U | Query NSCOUNT. |
| | | | |
| query-ar-count | | U | Query ARCOUNT. |
| | | | |
| edns-version | | U | The Query EDNS version. |
| | | | |
| udp-buf-size | | U | The Query EDNS sender's UDP payload |
| | | | size. |
| | | | |
| opt-rdata-index | | U | The index in the "name-rdata" array |
| | | | of the OPT RDATA. See Section 7.5.3. |
| | | | |
| response-rcode | | U | Response RCODE. If the Response |
| | | | contains OPT [RFC6891], this value |
| | | | incorporates any |
| | | | EXTENDED_RCODE_VALUE [rcodes]. |
+--------------------+---+---+--------------------------------------+
7.5.3.3. "Question"
Details on individual Questions in a Question section. A map
containing the following:
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+-----------------+---+---+-----------------------------------------+
| Field | M | T | Description |
+-----------------+---+---+-----------------------------------------+
| name-index | X | U | The index in the "name-rdata" array of |
| | | | the QNAME. See Section 7.5.3. |
| | | | |
| classtype-index | X | U | The index in the "classtype" array of |
| | | | the CLASS and TYPE of the Question. See |
| | | | Section 7.5.3. |
+-----------------+---+---+-----------------------------------------+
7.5.3.4. "RR"
Details on individual Resource Records in RR sections. A map
containing the following:
+-----------------+---+---+-----------------------------------------+
| Field | M | T | Description |
+-----------------+---+---+-----------------------------------------+
| name-index | X | U | The index in the "name-rdata" array of |
| | | | the NAME. See Section 7.5.3. |
| | | | |
| classtype-index | X | U | The index in the "classtype" array of |
| | | | the CLASS and TYPE of the RR. See |
| | | | Section 7.5.3. |
| | | | |
| ttl | | U | The RR Time to Live. |
| | | | |
| rdata-index | | U | The index in the "name-rdata" array of |
| | | | the RR RDATA. See Section 7.5.3. |
+-----------------+---+---+-----------------------------------------+
7.5.3.5. "MalformedMessageData"
Details on malformed message items in this "Block" item. A map
containing the following:
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+--------------------+---+---+--------------------------------------+
| Field | M | T | Description |
+--------------------+---+---+--------------------------------------+
| server-address | | U | The index in the "ip-address" array |
| -index | | | of the server IP address. See |
| | | | Section 7.5.3. |
| | | | |
| server-port | | U | The server port. |
| | | | |
| mm-transport-flags | C | U | Bit flags describing the transport |
| | | | used to service the query, see |
| | | | Section 6.2.4. |
| | | | Bit 0. IP version. 0 if IPv4, 1 if |
| | | | IPv6 |
| | | | Bit 1-4. Transport. 4 bit unsigned |
| | | | value where 0 = UDP, 1 = TCP, 2 = |
| | | | TLS, 3 = DTLS [RFC7858], 4 = DoH |
| | | | [RFC8484]. Values 5-15 are reserved |
| | | | for future use. |
| | | | |
| mm-payload | | S | The payload (raw bytes) of the DNS |
| | | | message. |
+--------------------+---+---+--------------------------------------+
7.6. "QueryResponse"
Details on individual Q/R data items.
Note that there is no requirement that the elements of the "query-
responses" array are presented in strict chronological order.
A map containing the following items:
+----------------------+---+---+------------------------------------+
| Field | M | T | Description |
+----------------------+---+---+------------------------------------+
| time-offset | | U | Q/R timestamp as an offset in |
| | | | ticks (see Section 7.4.1.1) from |
| | | | "earliest-time". The timestamp is |
| | | | the timestamp of the Query, or the |
| | | | Response if there is no Query. |
| | | | |
| client-address-index | | U | The index in the "ip-address" |
| | | | array of the client IP address. |
| | | | See Section 7.5.3. |
| | | | |
| client-port | | U | The client port. |
| | | | |
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| transaction-id | | U | DNS transaction identifier. |
| | | | |
| qr-signature-index | | U | The index in the "qr-sig" array of |
| | | | the "QueryResponseSignature" item. |
| | | | See Section 7.5.3. |
| | | | |
| client-hoplimit | | U | The IPv4 TTL or IPv6 Hoplimit from |
| | | | the Query packet. |
| | | | |
| response-delay | | I | The time difference between Query |
| | | | and Response, in ticks (see |
| | | | Section 7.4.1.1). Only present if |
| | | | there is a query and a response. |
| | | | The delay can be negative if the |
| | | | network stack/capture library |
| | | | returns packets out of order. |
| | | | |
| query-name-index | | U | The index in the "name-rdata" |
| | | | array of the item containing the |
| | | | QNAME for the first Question. See |
| | | | Section 7.5.3. |
| | | | |
| query-size | | U | DNS query message size (see |
| | | | below). |
| | | | |
| response-size | | U | DNS response message size (see |
| | | | below). |
| | | | |
| response-processing | | M | Data on response processing. Map |
| -data | | | of type "ResponseProcessingData", |
| | | | see Section 7.6.1. |
| | | | |
| query-extended | | M | Extended Query data. Map of type |
| | | | "QueryResponseExtended", see |
| | | | Section 7.6.2. |
| | | | |
| response-extended | | M | Extended Response data. Map of |
| | | | type "QueryResponseExtended", see |
| | | | Section 7.6.2. |
+----------------------+---+---+------------------------------------+
The "query-size" and "response-size" fields hold the DNS message
size. For UDP this is the size of the UDP payload that contained the
DNS message. For TCP it is the size of the DNS message as specified
in the two-byte message length header. Trailing bytes in UDP queries
are routinely observed in traffic to authoritative servers and this
value allows a calculation of how many trailing bytes were present.
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7.6.1. "ResponseProcessingData"
Information on the server processing that produced the response. A
map containing the following:
+------------------+---+---+----------------------------------------+
| Field | M | T | Description |
+------------------+---+---+----------------------------------------+
| bailiwick-index | | U | The index in the "name-rdata" array of |
| | | | the owner name for the response |
| | | | bailiwick. See Section 7.5.3. |
| | | | |
| processing-flags | | U | Flags relating to response processing. |
| | | | Bit 0. 1 if the response came from |
| | | | cache. |
+------------------+---+---+----------------------------------------+
7.6.2. "QueryResponseExtended"
Extended data on the Q/R data item.
Each item in the map is present only if collection of the relevant
details is configured.
A map containing the following items:
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+------------------+---+---+----------------------------------------+
| Field | M | T | Description |
+------------------+---+---+----------------------------------------+
| question-index | | U | The index in the "qlist" array of the |
| | | | entry listing any second and |
| | | | subsequent Questions in the Question |
| | | | section for the Query or Response. See |
| | | | Section 7.5.3. |
| | | | |
| answer-index | | U | The index in the "rrlist" array of the |
| | | | entry listing the Answer Resource |
| | | | Record sections for the Query or |
| | | | Response. See Section 7.5.3. |
| | | | |
| authority-index | | U | The index in the "rrlist" array of the |
| | | | entry listing the Authority Resource |
| | | | Record sections for the Query or |
| | | | Response. See Section 7.5.3. |
| | | | |
| additional-index | | U | The index in the "rrlist" array of the |
| | | | entry listing the Additional Resource |
| | | | Record sections for the Query or |
| | | | Response. See Section 7.5.3. Note that |
| | | | Query OPT RR data can be optionally |
| | | | stored in the QuerySignature. |
+------------------+---+---+----------------------------------------+
7.7. "AddressEventCount"
Counts of various IP related events relating to traffic with
individual client addresses. A map containing the following:
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+------------------+---+---+----------------------------------------+
| Field | M | T | Description |
+------------------+---+---+----------------------------------------+
| ae-type | X | U | The type of event. The following |
| | | | events types are currently defined: |
| | | | 0. TCP reset. |
| | | | 1. ICMP time exceeded. |
| | | | 2. ICMP destination unreachable. |
| | | | 3. ICMPv6 time exceeded. |
| | | | 4. ICMPv6 destination unreachable. |
| | | | 5. ICMPv6 packet too big. |
| | | | |
| ae-code | | U | A code relating to the event. For ICMP |
| | | | or ICMPv6 events, this MUST be the |
| | | | ICMP [RFC0792] or ICMPv6 [RFC4443] |
| | | | code. For other events the contents |
| | | | are undefined. |
| | | | |
| ae-address-index | X | U | The index in the "ip-address" array of |
| | | | the client address. See Section 7.5.3. |
| | | | |
| ae-count | X | U | The number of occurrences of this |
| | | | event during the block collection |
| | | | period. |
+------------------+---+---+----------------------------------------+
7.8. "MalformedMessage"
Details of malformed messages. A map containing the following:
+----------------------+---+---+------------------------------------+
| Field | M | T | Description |
+----------------------+---+---+------------------------------------+
| time-offset | | U | Message timestamp as an offset in |
| | | | ticks (see Section 7.4.1.1) from |
| | | | "earliest-time". |
| | | | |
| client-address-index | | U | The index in the "ip-address" |
| | | | array of the client IP address. |
| | | | See Section 7.5.3. |
| | | | |
| client-port | | U | The client port. |
| | | | |
| message-data-index | | U | The index in the "malformed- |
| | | | message-data" array of the message |
| | | | data for this message. See Section |
| | | | 7.5.3. |
+----------------------+---+---+------------------------------------+
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8. Versioning
The C-DNS file preamble includes a file format version; a major and
minor version number are required fields. The document defines
version 1.0 of the C-DNS specification. This section describes the
intended use of these version numbers in future specifications.
It is noted that version 1.0 includes many optional fields and
therefore consumers of version 1.0 should be inherently robust to
parsing files with variable data content.
Within a major version, a new minor version MUST be a strict superset
of the previous minor version, with no semantic changes to existing
fields. New keys MAY be added to existing maps, and new maps MAY be
added. A consumer capable of reading a particular major.minor
version MUST also be capable of reading all previous minor versions
of the same major version. It SHOULD also be capable of parsing all
subsequent minor versions ignoring any keys or maps that it does not
recognise.
A new major version indicates changes to the format that are not
backwards compatible with previous major versions. A consumer
capable of only reading a particular major version (greater than 1)
is not required to and has no expectation to be capable of reading a
previous major version.
9. C-DNS to PCAP
It is possible to re-construct PCAP files from the C-DNS format in a
lossy fashion. Some of the issues with reconstructing both the DNS
payload and the full packet stream are outlined here.
The reconstruction depends on whether or not all the optional
sections of both the query and response were captured in the C-DNS
file. Clearly, if they were not all captured, the reconstruction
will be imperfect.
Even if all sections of the response were captured, one cannot
reconstruct the DNS response payload exactly due to the fact that
some DNS names in the message on the wire may have been compressed.
Section 9.1 discusses this is more detail.
Some transport information is not captured in the C-DNS format. For
example, the following aspects of the original packet stream cannot
be re-constructed from the C-DNS format:
o IP fragmentation
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o TCP stream information:
* Multiple DNS messages may have been sent in a single TCP
segment
* A DNS payload may have been split across multiple TCP segments
* Multiple DNS messages may have been sent on a single TCP
session
o Malformed DNS messages if the wire format is not recorded
o Any Non-DNS messages that were in the original packet stream e.g.
ICMP
Simple assumptions can be made on the reconstruction: fragmented and
DNS-over-TCP messages can be reconstructed into single packets and a
single TCP session can be constructed for each TCP packet.
Additionally, if malformed messages and Non-DNS packets are captured
separately, they can be merged with packet captures reconstructed
from C-DNS to produce a more complete packet stream.
9.1. Name compression
All the names stored in the C-DNS format are full domain names; no
[RFC1035] name compression is used on the individual names within the
format. Therefore when reconstructing a packet, name compression
must be used in order to reproduce the on the wire representation of
the packet.
[RFC1035] name compression works by substituting trailing sections of
a name with a reference back to the occurrence of those sections
earlier in the message. Not all name server software uses the same
algorithm when compressing domain names within the responses. Some
attempt maximum recompression at the expense of runtime resources,
others use heuristics to balance compression and speed and others use
different rules for what is a valid compression target.
This means that responses to the same question from different name
server software which match in terms of DNS payload content (header,
counts, RRs with name compression removed) do not necessarily match
byte-for-byte on the wire.
Therefore, it is not possible to ensure that the DNS response payload
is reconstructed byte-for-byte from C-DNS data. However, it can at
least, in principle, be reconstructed to have the correct payload
length (since the original response length is captured) if there is
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enough knowledge of the commonly implemented name compression
algorithms. For example, a simplistic approach would be to try each
algorithm in turn to see if it reproduces the original length,
stopping at the first match. This would not guarantee the correct
algorithm has been used as it is possible to match the length whilst
still not matching the on the wire bytes but, without further
information added to the C-DNS data, this is the best that can be
achieved.
Appendix B presents an example of two different compression
algorithms used by well-known name server software.
10. Data collection
This section describes a non-normative proposed algorithm for the
processing of a captured stream of DNS queries and responses and
production of a stream of query/response items, matching queries/
responses where possible.
For the purposes of this discussion, it is assumed that the input has
been pre-processed such that:
1. All IP fragmentation reassembly, TCP stream reassembly, and so
on, has already been performed.
2. Each message is associated with transport metadata required to
generate the Primary ID (see Section 10.2.1).
3. Each message has a well-formed DNS header of 12 bytes and (if
present) the first Question in the Question section can be parsed
to generate the Secondary ID (see below). As noted earlier, this
requirement can result in a malformed query being removed in the
pre-processing stage, but the correctly formed response with
RCODE of FORMERR being present.
DNS messages are processed in the order they are delivered to the
implementation.
It should be noted that packet capture libraries do not necessarily
provide packets in strict chronological order. This can, for
example, arise on multi-core platforms where packets arriving at a
network device are processed by different cores. On systems where
this behaviour has been observed, the timestamps associated with each
packet are consistent; queries always have a timestamp prior to the
response timestamp. However, the order in which these packets appear
in the packet capture stream is not necessarily strictly
chronological; a response can appear in the capture stream before the
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query that provoked the response. For this discussion, this non-
chronological delivery is termed "skew".
In the presence of skew, a response packets can arrive for matching
before the corresponding query. To avoid generating false instances
of responses without a matching query, and queries without a matching
response, the matching algorithm must take account of the possibility
of skew.
10.1. Matching algorithm
A schematic representation of the algorithm for matching Q/R data
items is shown in Figure 3. It takes individual DNS query or
response messages as input, and outputs matched Q/R items. The
numbers in the figure identify matching operations listed in Table 1.
Specific details of the algorithm, for example queues, timers and
identifiers, are given in the following sections.
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.----------------------.
| Process next message |<------------------+
`----------------------' |
| |
+------------------------------+ |
| Generate message identifiers | |
+------------------------------+ |
| |
Response | Query |
+--------------< >---------------+ |
| | |
+--------------------+ +--------------------+ |
| Find earliest QR | | Create QR item [2] | |
| item in OFIFO [1] | +--------------------+ |
+--------------------+ | |
| +---------------+ |
Match | No match | Append new QR | |
+--------< >------+ | item to OFIFO | |
| | +---------------+ |
+-----------+ +--------+ | |
| Update QR | | Add to | +-------------------+ |
| item [3] | | RFIFO | | Find earliest QR | |
+-----------+ +--------+ | item in RFIFO [1] | |
| | +-------------------+ |
+-----------------+ | |
| | |
| +----------------+ Match | No match |
| | Remove R |-------< >-----+ |
| | from RFIFO [3] | | |
| +----------------+ | |
| | | |
+--------------+-----------------------+ |
| |
+----------------------------------------------+ |
| Update all timed out (QT) OFIFO QR items [4] | |
+----------------------------------------------+ |
| |
+--------------------------------+ |
| Remove all timed out (ST) R | |
| from RFIFO, create QR item [5] | |
+--------------------------------+ |
____________________|_______________________ |
/ / |
/ Remove all consecutive done entries from /-------+
/ front of OFIFO for further processing /
/____________________________________________/
Figure 3: Query/Response matching algorithm
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+-----+-------------------------------------------+
| Ref | Operation |
+-----+-------------------------------------------+
| [1] | Find earliest QR item in FIFO where: |
| | * QR.done = false |
| | * QR.Q.PrimaryID == R.PrimaryID |
| | and, if both QR.Q and R have SecondaryID: |
| | * QR.Q.SecondaryID == R.SecondaryID |
| | |
| [2] | Set: |
| | QR.Q := Q |
| | QR.R := nil |
| | QR.done := false |
| | |
| [3] | Set: |
| | QR.R := R |
| | QR.done := true |
| | |
| [4] | Set: |
| | QR.done := true |
| | |
| [5] | Set: |
| | QR.Q := nil |
| | QR.R := R |
| | QR.done := true |
+-----+-------------------------------------------+
Table 1: Operations used in the matching algorithm
10.2. Message identifiers
10.2.1. Primary ID (required)
A Primary ID is constructed for each message. It is composed of the
following data:
1. Source IP Address
2. Destination IP Address
3. Source Port
4. Destination Port
5. Transport
6. DNS Message ID
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10.2.2. Secondary ID (optional)
If present, the first Question in the Question section is used as a
secondary ID for each message. Note that there may be well formed
DNS queries that have a QDCOUNT of 0, and some responses may have a
QDCOUNT of 0 (for example, responses with RCODE=FORMERR or NOTIMP).
In this case the secondary ID is not used in matching.
10.3. Algorithm parameters
1. Query timeout, QT. A query arrives with timestamp t1. If no
response matching that query has arrived before other input
arrives timestamped later than (t1 + QT), a query/response item
containing only a query item is recorded. The query timeout
value is typically of the order of 5 seconds.
2. Skew timeout, ST. A response arrives with timestamp t2. If a
response has not been matched by a query before input arrives
timestamped later than (t2 + ST), a query/response item
containing only a response is recorded. The skew timeout value
is typically a few microseconds.
10.4. Algorithm requirements
The algorithm is designed to handle the following input data:
1. Multiple queries with the same Primary ID (but different
Secondary ID) arriving before any responses for these queries are
seen.
2. Multiple queries with the same Primary and Secondary ID arriving
before any responses for these queries are seen.
3. Queries for which no later response can be found within the
specified timeout.
4. Responses for which no previous query can be found within the
specified timeout.
10.5. Algorithm limitations
For cases 1 and 2 listed in the above requirements, it is not
possible to unambiguously match queries with responses. This
algorithm chooses to match to the earliest query with the correct
Primary and Secondary ID.
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10.6. Workspace
The algorithm employs two FIFO queues:
o OFIFO, an output FIFO containing Q/R items in chronological order,
o RFIFO, a FIFO holding responses without a matching query in order
of arrival.
10.7. Output
The output is a list of Q/R data items. Both the Query and Response
elements are optional in these items, therefore Q/R data items have
one of three types of content:
1. A matched pair of query and response messages
2. A query message with no response
3. A response message with no query
The timestamp of a list item is that of the query for cases 1 and 2
and that of the response for case 3.
10.8. Post processing
When ending capture, all items in the responses FIFO are timed out
immediately, generating response-only entries to the Q/R data item
FIFO. These and all other remaining entries in the Q/R data item
FIFO should be treated as timed out queries.
11. Implementation guidance
Whilst this document makes no specific recommendations with respect
to Canonical CBOR (see Section 3.9 of [RFC7049]) the following
guidance may be of use to implementors.
Adherence to the first two rules given in Section 3.9 of [RFC7049]
will minimise file sizes.
Adherence to the last two rules given in Section 3.9 of [RFC7049] for
all maps and arrays would unacceptably constrain implementations, for
example, in the use case of real-time data collection in constrained
environments where outputting block tables after query/response data
and allowing indefinite length maps and arrays could reduce memory
requirements.
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11.1. Optional data
When decoding C-DNS data some of the items required for a particular
function that the consumer wishes to perform may be missing.
Consumers should consider providing configurable default values to be
used in place of the missing values in their output.
11.2. Trailing bytes
A DNS query message in a UDP or TCP payload can be followed by some
additional (spurious) bytes, which are not stored in C-DNS.
When DNS traffic is sent over TCP, each message is prefixed with a
two byte length field which gives the message length, excluding the
two byte length field. In this context, trailing bytes can occur in
two circumstances with different results:
1. The number of bytes consumed by fully parsing the message is less
than the number of bytes given in the length field (i.e. the
length field is incorrect and too large). In this case, the
surplus bytes are considered trailing bytes in an analogous
manner to UDP and recorded as such. If only this case occurs it
is possible to process a packet containing multiple DNS messages
where one or more has trailing bytes.
2. There are surplus bytes between the end of a well-formed message
and the start of the length field for the next message. In this
case the first of the surplus bytes will be processed as the
first byte of the next length field, and parsing will proceed
from there, almost certainly leading to the next and any
subsequent messages in the packet being considered malformed.
This will not generate a trailing bytes record for the processed
well-formed message.
11.3. Limiting collection of RDATA
Implementations should consider providing a configurable maximum
RDATA size for capture, for example, to avoid memory issues when
confronted with large XFR records.
11.4. Timestamps
The preamble to each block includes a timestamp of the earliest
record in the block. As described in Section 7.5.1, the timestamp is
an array of 2 unsigned integers. The first is a POSIX "time_t"
[posix-time]. Consumers of C-DNS should be aware of this as it
excludes leap seconds and therefore may cause minor anomalies in the
data e.g. when calculating query throughput.
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12. Implementation status
[Note to RFC Editor: please remove this section and reference to
[RFC7942] prior to publication.]
This section records the status of known implementations of the
protocol defined by this specification at the time of posting of this
Internet-Draft, and is based on a proposal described in [RFC7942].
The description of implementations in this section is intended to
assist the IETF in its decision processes in progressing drafts to
RFCs. Please note that the listing of any individual implementation
here does not imply endorsement by the IETF. Furthermore, no effort
has been spent to verify the information presented here that was
supplied by IETF contributors. This is not intended as, and must not
be construed to be, a catalog of available implementations or their
features. Readers are advised to note that other implementations may
exist.
According to [RFC7942], "this will allow reviewers and working groups
to assign due consideration to documents that have the benefit of
running code, which may serve as evidence of valuable experimentation
and feedback that have made the implemented protocols more mature.
It is up to the individual working groups to use this information as
they see fit".
12.1. DNS-STATS Compactor
ICANN/Sinodun IT have developed an open source implementation called
DNS-STATS Compactor. The Compactor is a suite of tools which can
capture DNS traffic (from either a network interface or a PCAP file)
and store it in the Compacted-DNS (C-DNS) file format. PCAP files
for the captured traffic can also be reconstructed. See Compactor
[1].
This implementation:
o covers the whole of the specification described in the -03 draft
with the exception of support for malformed messages and pico
second time resolution. (Note: this implementation does allow
malformed messages to be recorded separately in a PCAP file).
o is released under the Mozilla Public License Version 2.0.
o has a users mailing list available, see dns-stats-users [2].
There is also some discussion of issues encountered during
development available at Compressing Pcap Files [3] and Packet
Capture [4].
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This information was last updated on 3rd of May 2018.
13. IANA considerations
IANA is requested to create a registry "C-DNS DNS Capture Format"
containing the subregistries defined in sections Section 13.1 to
Section 13.4 inclusive.
In all cases, new entries may be added to the subregistries by Expert
Review as defined in [RFC8126]. Experts are expected to exercise
their own expert judgement, and should consider the following general
guidelines in addition to any guidelines given particular to a
subregistry.
o There should be a real and compelling use for any new value.
o Values assigned should be carefully chosen to minimise storage
requirements for common cases.
13.1. Transport types
IANA is requested to create a registry "C-DNS Transports" of C-DNS
transport type identifiers. The primary purpose of this registry is
to provide unique identifiers for all transports used for DNS
queries.
The following note is included in this registry: "In version 1.0 of
C-DNS [[this RFC]], there is a field to identify the type of DNS
transport. This field is 4 bits in size."
The initial contents of the registry are as follows - see sections
Section 7.5.3.2 and Section 7.5.3.5 of [[this RFC]]:
+------------+------------+--------------+
| Identifier | Name | Reference |
+------------+------------+--------------+
| 0 | UDP | [[this RFC]] |
| 1 | TCP | [[this RFC]] |
| 2 | TLS | [[this RFC]] |
| 3 | DTLS | [[this RFC]] |
| 4 | DoH | [[this RFC]] |
| 5-15 | Unassigned | |
+------------+------------+--------------+
Expert reviewers should take the following points into consideration:
o Is the requested DNS transport described by a Standards Track RFC?
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13.2. Data storage flags
IANA is requested to create a registry "C-DNS Storage Flags" of C-DNS
data storage flags. The primary purpose of this registry is to
provide indicators giving hints on processing of the data stored.
The following note is included in this registry: "In version 1.0 of
C-DNS [[this RFC]], there is a field describing attributes of the
data recorded. The field is a CBOR [RFC7049] unsigned integer
holding bit flags."
The initial contents of the registry are as follows - see section
Section 7.4.1.1 of [[this RFC]]:
+------+------------------+-----------------------------+-----------+
| Bit | Name | Description | Reference |
+------+------------------+-----------------------------+-----------+
| 0 | anonymised-data | The data has been | [[this |
| | | anonymised. | RFC]] |
| 1 | sampled-data | The data is sampled data. | [[this |
| | | | RFC]] |
| 2 | normalized-names | Names in the data have been | [[this |
| | | normalized. | RFC]] |
| 3-63 | Unassigned | | |
+------+------------------+-----------------------------+-----------+
13.3. Response processing flags
IANA is requested to create a registry "C-DNS Response Flags" of
C-DNS response processing flags. The primary purpose of this
registry is to provide indicators giving hints on the generation of a
particular response.
The following note is included in this registry: "In version 1.0 of
C-DNS [[this RFC]], there is a field describing attributes of the
responses recorded. The field is a CBOR [RFC7049] unsigned integer
holding bit flags."
The initial contents of the registry are as follows - see section
Section 7.6.1 of [[this RFC]]:
+------+------------+-------------------------------+--------------+
| Bit | Name | Description | Reference |
+------+------------+-------------------------------+--------------+
| 0 | from-cache | The response came from cache. | [[this RFC]] |
| 1-63 | Unassigned | | |
+------+------------+-------------------------------+--------------+
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13.4. AddressEvent types
IANA is requested to create a registry "C-DNS Address Event Types" of
C-DNS AddressEvent types. The primary purpose of this registry is to
provide unique identifiers of different types of C-DNS address
events, and so specify the contents of the optional companion field
"ae-code" for each type.
The following note is included in this registry: "In version 1.0 of
C-DNS [[this RFC]], there is a field identify types of the events
related to client addresses. This field is a CBOR [RFC7049] unsigned
integer. There is a related optional field "ae-code", which, if
present, holds an additional CBOR unsigned integer giving additional
information specific to the event type."
The initial contents of the registry are as follows - see section
Section 7.7:
+------------+----------------------+-------------------+-----------+
| Identifier | Event Type | ae-code contents | Reference |
+------------+----------------------+-------------------+-----------+
| 0 | TCP reset | None | [[this |
| | | | RFC]] |
| 1 | ICMP time exceeded | ICMP code | [[this |
| | | [icmpcodes] | RFC]] |
| 2 | ICMP destination | ICMP code | [[this |
| | unreachable | [icmpcodes] | RFC]] |
| 3 | ICMPv6 time exceeded | ICMPv6 code | [[this |
| | | [icmp6codes] | RFC]] |
| 4 | ICMPv6 destination | ICMPv6 code | [[this |
| | unreachable | [icmp6codes] | RFC]] |
| 5 | ICMPv6 packet too | ICMPv6 code | [[this |
| | big | [icmp6codes] | RFC]] |
| >5 | Unassigned | | |
+------------+----------------------+-------------------+-----------+
Expert reviewers should take the following points into consideration:
o "ae-code" contents must be defined for a type, or if not
appropriate specified as "None". A specification of "None"
requires less storage, and is therefore preferred.
14. Security considerations
Any control interface MUST perform authentication and encryption.
Any data upload MUST be authenticated and encrypted.
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15. Privacy considerations
Storage of DNS traffic by operators in PCAP and other formats is a
long standing and widespread practice. Section 2.5 of
[I-D.bortzmeyer-dprive-rfc7626-bis] is an analysis of the risks to
Internet users of the storage of DNS traffic data in servers
(recursive resolvers, authoritative and rogue servers).
Section 5.2 of [I-D.dickinson-dprive-bcp-op] describes mitigations
for those risks for data stored on recursive resolvers (but which
could by extension apply to authoritative servers). These include
data handling practices and methods for data minimization, IP address
pseudonymization and anonymization. Appendix B of that document
presents an analysis of 7 published anonymization processes. In
addition, RSSAC have recently published RSSAC04: [5] "
Recommendations on Anonymization Processes for Source IP Addresses
Submitted for Future Analysis".
The above analyses consider full data capture (e.g using PCAP) as a
baseline for privacy considerations and therefore this format
specification introduces no new user privacy issues beyond those of
full data capture (which are quite severe). It does provides
mechanisms to selectively record only certain fields at the time of
data capture to improve user privacy and to explicitly indicate that
data is sampled and or anonymized. It also provide flags to indicate
if data normalization has been performed; data normalization
increases user privacy by reducing the potential for fingerprinting
individuals, however, a trade-off is potentially reducing the
capacity to identify attack traffic via query name signatures.
Operators should carefully consider their operational requirements
and privacy policies and SHOULD capture at source the minimum user
data required to meet their needs.
16. Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank CZ.NIC, in particular Tomas Gavenciak, for
many useful discussions on binary formats, compression and packet
matching. Also Jan Vcelak and Wouter Wijngaards for discussions on
name compression and Paul Hoffman for a detailed review of the
document and the C-DNS CDDL.
Thanks also to Robert Edmonds, Jerry Lundstroem, Richard Gibson,
Stephane Bortzmeyer and many other members of DNSOP for review.
Also, Miek Gieben for mmark [6]
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17. Changelog
draft-ietf-dnsop-dns-capture-format-10
o Add IANA Considerations
o Convert graph in C.6 to table
draft-ietf-dnsop-dns-capture-format-09
o Editorial changes arising from IESG review
o *-transport-flags and may be mandatory in some configurations
o Mark fields that are conditionally mandatory
o Change `promisc' flag CDDL data type to boolean
o Add ranges to configuration quantities where appropriate
draft-ietf-dnsop-dns-capture-format-08
o Convert diagrams to ASCII
o Describe versioning
o Fix unused group warning in CDDL
draft-ietf-dnsop-dns-capture-format-07
o Resolve outstanding questions and TODOs
o Make RR RDATA optional
o Update matching diagram and explain skew
o Add count of discarded messages to block statistics
o Editorial clarifications and improvements
draft-ietf-dnsop-dns-capture-format-06
o Correct BlockParameters type to map
o Make RR ttl optional
o Add storage flag indicating name normalization
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o Add storage parameter fields for sampling and anonymization
methods
o Editorial clarifications and improvements
draft-ietf-dnsop-dns-capture-format-05
o Make all data items in Q/R, QuerySignature and Malformed Message
arrays optional
o Re-structure the FilePreamble and ConfigurationParameters into
BlockParameters
o BlockParameters has separate Storage and Collection Parameters
o Storage Parameters includes information on what optional fields
are present, and flags specifying anonymization or sampling
o Addresses can now be stored as prefixes.
o Switch to using a variable sub-second timing granularity
o Add response bailiwick and query response type
o Add specifics of how to record malformed messages
o Add implementation guidance
o Improve terminology and naming consistency
draft-ietf-dnsop-dns-capture-format-04
o Correct query-d0 to query-do in CDDL
o Clarify that map keys are unsigned integers
o Add Type to Class/Type table
o Clarify storage format in section 7.12
draft-ietf-dnsop-dns-capture-format-03
o Added an Implementation Status section
draft-ietf-dnsop-dns-capture-format-02
o Update qr_data_format.png to match CDDL
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o Editorial clarifications and improvements
draft-ietf-dnsop-dns-capture-format-01
o Many editorial improvements by Paul Hoffman
o Included discussion of malformed message handling
o Improved Appendix C on Comparison of Binary Formats
o Now using C-DNS field names in the tables in section 8
o A handful of new fields included (CDDL updated)
o Timestamps now include optional picoseconds
o Added details of block statistics
draft-ietf-dnsop-dns-capture-format-00
o Changed dnstap.io to dnstap.info
o qr_data_format.png was cut off at the bottom
o Update authors address
o Improve wording in Abstract
o Changed DNS-STAT to C-DNS in CDDL
o Set the format version in the CDDL
o Added a TODO: Add block statistics
o Added a TODO: Add extend to support pico/nano. Also do this for
Time offset and Response delay
o Added a TODO: Need to develop optional representation of malformed
messages within C-DNS and what this means for packet matching.
This may influence which fields are optional in the rest of the
representation.
o Added section on design goals to Introduction
o Added a TODO: Can Class be optimised? Should a class of IN be
inferred if not present?
draft-dickinson-dnsop-dns-capture-format-00
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o Initial commit
18. References
18.1. Normative References
[I-D.ietf-cbor-cddl]
Birkholz, H., Vigano, C., and C. Bormann, "Concise data
definition language (CDDL): a notational convention to
express CBOR and JSON data structures", draft-ietf-cbor-
cddl-06 (work in progress), November 2018.
[pcap-filter]
tcpdump.org, "Manpage of PCAP-FILTER", 2017,
<http://www.tcpdump.org/manpages/pcap-filter.7.html>.
[pcap-options]
tcpdump.org, "Manpage of PCAP", 2018,
<http://www.tcpdump.org/manpages/pcap.3pcap.html>.
[posix-time]
The Open Group, "Section 4.16, Base Definitions, Standard
for Information Technology - Portable Operating System
Interface (POSIX(R)) Base Specifications, Issue 7", IEEE
Standard 1003.1 2017 Edition,
DOI 10.1109/IEEESTD.2018.8277153, 2017.
[RFC0792] Postel, J., "Internet Control Message Protocol", STD 5,
RFC 792, DOI 10.17487/RFC0792, September 1981,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc792>.
[RFC1035] Mockapetris, P., "Domain names - implementation and
specification", STD 13, RFC 1035, DOI 10.17487/RFC1035,
November 1987, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1035>.
[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/info/rfc2119>.
[RFC3986] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter, "Uniform
Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax", STD 66,
RFC 3986, DOI 10.17487/RFC3986, January 2005,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3986>.
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[RFC4443] Conta, A., Deering, S., and M. Gupta, Ed., "Internet
Control Message Protocol (ICMPv6) for the Internet
Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) Specification", STD 89,
RFC 4443, DOI 10.17487/RFC4443, March 2006,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4443>.
[RFC6891] Damas, J., Graff, M., and P. Vixie, "Extension Mechanisms
for DNS (EDNS(0))", STD 75, RFC 6891,
DOI 10.17487/RFC6891, April 2013,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6891>.
[RFC7049] Bormann, C. and P. Hoffman, "Concise Binary Object
Representation (CBOR)", RFC 7049, DOI 10.17487/RFC7049,
October 2013, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7049>.
[RFC7858] Hu, Z., Zhu, L., Heidemann, J., Mankin, A., Wessels, D.,
and P. Hoffman, "Specification for DNS over Transport
Layer Security (TLS)", RFC 7858, DOI 10.17487/RFC7858, May
2016, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7858>.
[RFC8126] Cotton, M., Leiba, B., and T. Narten, "Guidelines for
Writing an IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26,
RFC 8126, DOI 10.17487/RFC8126, June 2017,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8126>.
[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/info/rfc8174>.
[RFC8484] Hoffman, P. and P. McManus, "DNS Queries over HTTPS
(DoH)", RFC 8484, DOI 10.17487/RFC8484, October 2018,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8484>.
18.2. Informative References
[ditl] DNS-OARC, "DITL", 2016,
<https://www.dns-oarc.net/oarc/data/ditl>.
[dnscap] DNS-OARC, "DNSCAP", 2016,
<https://www.dns-oarc.net/tools/dnscap>.
[dnstap] dnstap.info, "dnstap", 2016, <http://dnstap.info/>.
[dsc] Wessels, D. and J. Lundstrom, "DSC", 2016,
<https://www.dns-oarc.net/tools/dsc>.
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[I-D.bortzmeyer-dprive-rfc7626-bis]
Bortzmeyer, S. and S. Dickinson, "DNS Privacy
Considerations", draft-bortzmeyer-dprive-rfc7626-bis-01
(work in progress), July 2018.
[I-D.daley-dnsxml]
Daley, J., Morris, S., and J. Dickinson, "dnsxml - A
standard XML representation of DNS data", draft-daley-
dnsxml-00 (work in progress), July 2013.
[I-D.dickinson-dprive-bcp-op]
Dickinson, S., Overeinder, B., Rijswijk-Deij, R., and A.
Mankin, "Recommendations for DNS Privacy Service
Operators", draft-dickinson-dprive-bcp-op-01 (work in
progress), July 2018.
[icmp6codes]
IANA, "ICMPv6 "Code" Fields", 2018,
<https://www.iana.org/assignments/icmpv6-parameters/
icmpv6-parameters.xhtml#icmpv6-parameters-3>.
[icmpcodes]
IANA, "Code Fields", 2018,
<https://www.iana.org/assignments/icmp-parameters/
icmp-parameters.xhtml#icmp-parameters-codes>.
[IEEE802.1Q]
IEEE, "IEEE Standard for Local and metropolitan area
networks -- Bridges and Bridged Networks",
DOI 10.1109/IEEESTD.2014.6991462, 2014.
[opcodes] IANA, "DNS OpCodes", 2018,
<http://www.iana.org/assignments/dns-parameters/
dns-parameters.xhtml#dns-parameters-5>.
[packetq] .SE - The Internet Infrastructure Foundation, "PacketQ",
2014, <https://github.com/dotse/PacketQ>.
[pcap] tcpdump.org, "PCAP", 2016, <http://www.tcpdump.org/>.
[pcapng] Tuexen, M., Risso, F., Bongertz, J., Combs, G., and G.
Harris, "pcap-ng", 2016,
<https://github.com/pcapng/pcapng>.
[rcodes] IANA, "DNS RCODEs", 2018,
<http://www.iana.org/assignments/dns-parameters/
dns-parameters.xhtml#dns-parameters-6>.
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[RFC7942] Sheffer, Y. and A. Farrel, "Improving Awareness of Running
Code: The Implementation Status Section", BCP 205,
RFC 7942, DOI 10.17487/RFC7942, July 2016,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7942>.
[RFC8259] Bray, T., Ed., "The JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) Data
Interchange Format", STD 90, RFC 8259,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8259, December 2017,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8259>.
[RFC8427] Hoffman, P., "Representing DNS Messages in JSON",
RFC 8427, DOI 10.17487/RFC8427, July 2018,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8427>.
[rrclasses]
IANA, "DNS CLASSes", 2018,
<http://www.iana.org/assignments/dns-parameters/
dns-parameters.xhtml#dns-parameters-2>.
[rrtypes] IANA, "Resource Record (RR) TYPEs", 2018,
<http://www.iana.org/assignments/dns-parameters/
dns-parameters.xhtml#dns-parameters-4>.
18.3. URIs
[1] https://github.com/dns-stats/compactor/wiki
[2] https://mm.dns-stats.org/mailman/listinfo/dns-stats-users
[3] https://www.sinodun.com/2017/06/compressing-pcap-files/
[4] https://www.sinodun.com/2017/06/more-on-debian-jessieubuntu-
trusty-packet-capture-woes/
[5] https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/rssac-
040-07aug18-en.pdf
[6] https://github.com/miekg/mmark
[7] https://www.nlnetlabs.nl/projects/nsd/
[8] https://www.knot-dns.cz/
[9] https://avro.apache.org/
[10] https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/
[11] http://cbor.io
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[12] https://github.com/kubo/snzip
[13] http://google.github.io/snappy/
[14] http://lz4.github.io/lz4/
[15] http://www.gzip.org/
[16] http://facebook.github.io/zstd/
[17] http://tukaani.org/xz/
Appendix A. CDDL
This appendix gives a CDDL [I-D.ietf-cbor-cddl] specification for
C-DNS.
CDDL does not permit a range of allowed values to be specified for a
bitfield. Where necessary, those values are given as a CDDL group,
but the group definition is commented out to prevent CDDL tooling
from warning that the group is unused.
; CDDL specification of the file format for C-DNS,
; which describes a collection of DNS messages and
; traffic meta-data.
;
; The overall structure of a file.
;
File = [
file-type-id : "C-DNS",
file-preamble : FilePreamble,
file-blocks : [* Block],
]
;
; The file preamble.
;
FilePreamble = {
major-format-version => 1,
minor-format-version => 0,
? private-version => uint,
block-parameters => [+ BlockParameters],
}
major-format-version = 0
minor-format-version = 1
private-version = 2
block-parameters = 3
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BlockParameters = {
storage-parameters => StorageParameters,
? collection-parameters => CollectionParameters,
}
storage-parameters = 0
collection-parameters = 1
IPv6PrefixLength = 1..128
IPv4PrefixLength = 1..32
OpcodeRange = 0..15
RRTypeRange = 0..65535
StorageParameters = {
ticks-per-second => uint,
max-block-items => uint,
storage-hints => StorageHints,
opcodes => [+ OpcodeRange],
rr-types => [+ RRTypeRange],
? storage-flags => StorageFlags,
? client-address-prefix-ipv4 => IPv4PrefixLength,
? client-address-prefix-ipv6 => IPv6PrefixLength,
? server-address-prefix-ipv4 => IPv4PrefixLength,
? server-address-prefix-ipv6 => IPv6PrefixLength,
? sampling-method => tstr,
? anonymisation-method => tstr,
}
ticks-per-second = 0
max-block-items = 1
storage-hints = 2
opcodes = 3
rr-types = 4
storage-flags = 5
client-address-prefix-ipv4 = 6
client-address-prefix-ipv6 = 7
server-address-prefix-ipv4 = 8
server-address-prefix-ipv6 = 9
sampling-method = 10
anonymisation-method = 11
; A hint indicates if the collection method will output the
; item or will ignore the item if present.
StorageHints = {
query-response-hints => QueryResponseHints,
query-response-signature-hints =>
QueryResponseSignatureHints,
rr-hints => RRHints,
other-data-hints => OtherDataHints,
}
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query-response-hints = 0
query-response-signature-hints = 1
rr-hints = 2
other-data-hints = 3
QueryResponseHintValues = &(
time-offset : 0,
client-address-index : 1,
client-port : 2,
transaction-id : 3,
qr-signature-index : 4,
client-hoplimit : 5,
response-delay : 6,
query-name-index : 7,
query-size : 8,
response-size : 9,
response-processing-data : 10,
query-question-sections : 11, ; Second & subsequent
; questions
query-answer-sections : 12,
query-authority-sections : 13,
query-additional-sections : 14,
response-answer-sections : 15,
response-authority-sections : 16,
response-additional-sections : 17,
)
QueryResponseHints = uint .bits QueryResponseHintValues
QueryResponseSignatureHintValues = &(
server-address : 0,
server-port : 1,
qr-transport-flags : 2,
qr-type : 3,
qr-sig-flags : 4,
query-opcode : 5,
dns-flags : 6,
query-rcode : 7,
query-class-type : 8,
query-qdcount : 9,
query-ancount : 10,
query-arcount : 11,
query-nscount : 12,
query-edns-version : 13,
query-udp-size : 14,
query-opt-rdata : 15,
response-rcode : 16,
)
QueryResponseSignatureHints =
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uint .bits QueryResponseSignatureHintValues
RRHintValues = &(
ttl : 0,
rdata-index : 1,
)
RRHints = uint .bits RRHintValues
OtherDataHintValues = &(
malformed-messages : 0,
address-event-counts : 1,
)
OtherDataHints = uint .bits OtherDataHintValues
StorageFlagValues = &(
anonymised-data : 0,
sampled-data : 1,
normalized-names : 2,
)
StorageFlags = uint .bits StorageFlagValues
; Hints for later analysis.
VLANIdRange = 1..4094
CollectionParameters = {
? query-timeout => uint,
? skew-timeout => uint,
? snaplen => uint,
? promisc => bool,
? interfaces => [+ tstr],
? server-addresses => [+ IPAddress],
? vlan-ids => [+ VLANIdRange],
? filter => tstr,
? generator-id => tstr,
? host-id => tstr,
}
query-timeout = 0
skew-timeout = 1
snaplen = 2
promisc = 3
interfaces = 4
server-addresses = 5
vlan-ids = 6
filter = 7
generator-id = 8
host-id = 9
;
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; Data in the file is stored in Blocks.
;
Block = {
block-preamble => BlockPreamble,
? block-statistics => BlockStatistics, ; Much of this
; could be derived
? block-tables => BlockTables,
? query-responses => [+ QueryResponse],
? address-event-counts => [+ AddressEventCount],
? malformed-messages => [+ MalformedMessage],
}
block-preamble = 0
block-statistics = 1
block-tables = 2
query-responses = 3
address-event-counts = 4
malformed-messages = 5
;
; The (mandatory) preamble to a block.
;
BlockPreamble = {
? earliest-time => Timestamp,
? block-parameters-index => uint .default 0,
}
earliest-time = 0
block-parameters-index = 1
; Ticks are subsecond intervals. The number of ticks in a second is
; file/block metadata. Signed and unsigned tick types are defined.
ticks = int
uticks = uint
Timestamp = [
timestamp-secs : uint,
timestamp-uticks : uticks,
]
;
; Statistics about the block contents.
;
BlockStatistics = {
? processed-messages => uint,
? qr-data-items => uint,
? unmatched-queries => uint,
? unmatched-responses => uint,
? discarded-opcode => uint,
? malformed-items => uint,
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}
processed-messages = 0
qr-data-items = 1
unmatched-queries = 2
unmatched-responses = 3
discarded-opcode = 4
malformed-items = 5
;
; Tables of common data referenced from records in a block.
;
BlockTables = {
? ip-address => [+ IPAddress],
? classtype => [+ ClassType],
? name-rdata => [+ bstr], ; Holds both Names
; and RDATA
? qr-sig => [+ QueryResponseSignature],
? QuestionTables,
? RRTables,
? malformed-message-data => [+ MalformedMessageData],
}
ip-address = 0
classtype = 1
name-rdata = 2
qr-sig = 3
qlist = 4
qrr = 5
rrlist = 6
rr = 7
malformed-message-data = 8
IPv4Address = bstr .size 4
IPv6Address = bstr .size 16
IPAddress = IPv4Address / IPv6Address
ClassType = {
type => uint,
class => uint,
}
type = 0
class = 1
QueryResponseSignature = {
? server-address-index => uint,
? server-port => uint,
? qr-transport-flags => QueryResponseTransportFlags,
? qr-type => QueryResponseType,
? qr-sig-flags => QueryResponseFlags,
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? query-opcode => uint,
? qr-dns-flags => DNSFlags,
? query-rcode => uint,
? query-classtype-index => uint,
? query-qd-count => uint,
? query-an-count => uint,
? query-ns-count => uint,
? query-ar-count => uint,
? edns-version => uint,
? udp-buf-size => uint,
? opt-rdata-index => uint,
? response-rcode => uint,
}
server-address-index = 0
server-port = 1
qr-transport-flags = 2
qr-type = 3
qr-sig-flags = 4
query-opcode = 5
qr-dns-flags = 6
query-rcode = 7
query-classtype-index = 8
query-qd-count = 9
query-an-count = 10
query-ns-count = 12
query-ar-count = 12
edns-version = 13
udp-buf-size = 14
opt-rdata-index = 15
response-rcode = 16
; Transport gives the values that may appear in bits 1..4 of
; TransportFlags. There is currently no way to express this in
; CDDL, so Transport is unused. To avoid confusion when used
; with CDDL tools, it is commented out.
;
; Transport = &(
; udp : 0,
; tcp : 1,
; tls : 2,
; dtls : 3,
; doh : 4,
; )
TransportFlagValues = &(
ip-version : 0, ; 0=IPv4, 1=IPv6
) / (1..4)
TransportFlags = uint .bits TransportFlagValues
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QueryResponseTransportFlagValues = &(
query-trailingdata : 5,
) / TransportFlagValues
QueryResponseTransportFlags =
uint .bits QueryResponseTransportFlagValues
QueryResponseType = &(
stub : 0,
client : 1,
resolver : 2,
auth : 3,
forwarder : 4,
tool : 5,
)
QueryResponseFlagValues = &(
has-query : 0,
has-reponse : 1,
query-has-opt : 2,
response-has-opt : 3,
query-has-no-question : 4,
response-has-no-question: 5,
)
QueryResponseFlags = uint .bits QueryResponseFlagValues
DNSFlagValues = &(
query-cd : 0,
query-ad : 1,
query-z : 2,
query-ra : 3,
query-rd : 4,
query-tc : 5,
query-aa : 6,
query-do : 7,
response-cd: 8,
response-ad: 9,
response-z : 10,
response-ra: 11,
response-rd: 12,
response-tc: 13,
response-aa: 14,
)
DNSFlags = uint .bits DNSFlagValues
QuestionTables = (
qlist => [+ QuestionList],
qrr => [+ Question]
)
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QuestionList = [+ uint] ; Index of Question
Question = { ; Second and subsequent questions
name-index => uint, ; Index to a name in the
; name-rdata table
classtype-index => uint,
}
name-index = 0
classtype-index = 1
RRTables = (
rrlist => [+ RRList],
rr => [+ RR]
)
RRList = [+ uint] ; Index of RR
RR = {
name-index => uint, ; Index to a name in the
; name-rdata table
classtype-index => uint,
? ttl => uint,
? rdata-index => uint, ; Index to RDATA in the
; name-rdata table
}
; Other map key values already defined above.
ttl = 2
rdata-index = 3
MalformedMessageData = {
? server-address-index => uint,
? server-port => uint,
? mm-transport-flags => TransportFlags,
? mm-payload => bstr,
}
; Other map key values already defined above.
mm-transport-flags = 2
mm-payload = 3
;
; A single query/response pair.
;
QueryResponse = {
? time-offset => uticks, ; Time offset from
; start of block
? client-address-index => uint,
? client-port => uint,
? transaction-id => uint,
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? qr-signature-index => uint,
? client-hoplimit => uint,
? response-delay => ticks,
? query-name-index => uint,
? query-size => uint, ; DNS size of query
? response-size => uint, ; DNS size of response
? response-processing-data => ResponseProcessingData,
? query-extended => QueryResponseExtended,
? response-extended => QueryResponseExtended,
}
time-offset = 0
client-address-index = 1
client-port = 2
transaction-id = 3
qr-signature-index = 4
client-hoplimit = 5
response-delay = 6
query-name-index = 7
query-size = 8
response-size = 9
response-processing-data = 10
query-extended = 11
response-extended = 12
ResponseProcessingData = {
? bailiwick-index => uint,
? processing-flags => ResponseProcessingFlags,
}
bailiwick-index = 0
processing-flags = 1
ResponseProcessingFlagValues = &(
from-cache : 0,
)
ResponseProcessingFlags = uint .bits ResponseProcessingFlagValues
QueryResponseExtended = {
? question-index => uint, ; Index of QuestionList
? answer-index => uint, ; Index of RRList
? authority-index => uint,
? additional-index => uint,
}
question-index = 0
answer-index = 1
authority-index = 2
additional-index = 3
;
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; Address event data.
;
AddressEventCount = {
ae-type => &AddressEventType,
? ae-code => uint,
ae-address-index => uint,
ae-count => uint,
}
ae-type = 0
ae-code = 1
ae-address-index = 2
ae-count = 3
AddressEventType = (
tcp-reset : 0,
icmp-time-exceeded : 1,
icmp-dest-unreachable : 2,
icmpv6-time-exceeded : 3,
icmpv6-dest-unreachable: 4,
icmpv6-packet-too-big : 5,
)
;
; Malformed messages.
;
MalformedMessage = {
? time-offset => uticks, ; Time offset from
; start of block
? client-address-index => uint,
? client-port => uint,
? message-data-index => uint,
}
; Other map key values already defined above.
message-data-index = 3
Appendix B. DNS Name compression example
The basic algorithm, which follows the guidance in [RFC1035], is
simply to collect each name, and the offset in the packet at which it
starts, during packet construction. As each name is added, it is
offered to each of the collected names in order of collection,
starting from the first name. If labels at the end of the name can
be replaced with a reference back to part (or all) of the earlier
name, and if the uncompressed part of the name is shorter than any
compression already found, the earlier name is noted as the
compression target for the name.
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The following tables illustrate the process. In an example packet,
the first name is foo.example.
+---+-------------+--------------+--------------------+
| N | Name | Uncompressed | Compression Target |
+---+-------------+--------------+--------------------+
| 1 | foo.example | | |
+---+-------------+--------------+--------------------+
The next name added is bar.example. This is matched against
foo.example. The example part of this can be used as a compression
target, with the remaining uncompressed part of the name being bar.
+---+-------------+--------------+-----------------------+
| N | Name | Uncompressed | Compression Target |
+---+-------------+--------------+-----------------------+
| 1 | foo.example | | |
| 2 | bar.example | bar | 1 + offset to example |
+---+-------------+--------------+-----------------------+
The third name added is www.bar.example. This is first matched
against foo.example, and as before this is recorded as a compression
target, with the remaining uncompressed part of the name being
www.bar. It is then matched against the second name, which again can
be a compression target. Because the remaining uncompressed part of
the name is www, this is an improved compression, and so it is
adopted.
+---+-----------------+--------------+-----------------------+
| N | Name | Uncompressed | Compression Target |
+---+-----------------+--------------+-----------------------+
| 1 | foo.example | | |
| 2 | bar.example | bar | 1 + offset to example |
| 3 | www.bar.example | www | 2 |
+---+-----------------+--------------+-----------------------+
As an optimization, if a name is already perfectly compressed (in
other words, the uncompressed part of the name is empty), then no
further names will be considered for compression.
B.1. NSD compression algorithm
Using the above basic algorithm the packet lengths of responses
generated by NSD [7] can be matched almost exactly. At the time of
writing, a tiny number (<.01%) of the reconstructed packets had
incorrect lengths.
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B.2. Knot Authoritative compression algorithm
The Knot Authoritative [8] name server uses different compression
behavior, which is the result of internal optimization designed to
balance runtime speed with compression size gains. In brief, and
omitting complications, Knot Authoritative will only consider the
QNAME and names in the immediately preceding RR section in an RRSET
as compression targets.
A set of smart heuristics as described below can be implemented to
mimic this and while not perfect it produces output nearly, but not
quite, as good a match as with NSD. The heuristics are:
1. A match is only perfect if the name is completely compressed AND
the TYPE of the section in which the name occurs matches the TYPE
of the name used as the compression target.
2. If the name occurs in RDATA:
* If the compression target name is in a query, then only the
first RR in an RRSET can use that name as a compression
target.
* The compression target name MUST be in RDATA.
* The name section TYPE must match the compression target name
section TYPE.
* The compression target name MUST be in the immediately
preceding RR in the RRSET.
Using this algorithm less than 0.1% of the reconstructed packets had
incorrect lengths.
B.3. Observed differences
In sample traffic collected on a root name server around 2-4% of
responses generated by Knot had different packet lengths to those
produced by NSD.
Appendix C. Comparison of Binary Formats
Several binary serialisation formats were considered, and for
completeness were also compared to JSON.
o Apache Avro [9]. Data is stored according to a pre-defined
schema. The schema itself is always included in the data file.
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Data can therefore be stored untagged, for a smaller serialisation
size, and be written and read by an Avro library.
* At the time of writing, Avro libraries are available for C,
C++, C#, Java, Python, Ruby and PHP. Optionally tools are
available for C++, Java and C# to generate code for encoding
and decoding.
o Google Protocol Buffers [10]. Data is stored according to a pre-
defined schema. The schema is used by a generator to generate
code for encoding and decoding the data. Data can therefore be
stored untagged, for a smaller serialisation size. The schema is
not stored with the data, so unlike Avro cannot be read with a
generic library.
* Code must be generated for a particular data schema to read and
write data using that schema. At the time of writing, the
Google code generator can currently generate code for encoding
and decoding a schema for C++, Go, Java, Python, Ruby, C#,
Objective-C, Javascript and PHP.
o CBOR [11]. Defined in [RFC7049], this serialisation format is
comparable to JSON but with a binary representation. It does not
use a pre-defined schema, so data is always stored tagged.
However, CBOR data schemas can be described using CDDL
[I-D.ietf-cbor-cddl] and tools exist to verify data files conform
to the schema.
* CBOR is a simple format, and simple to implement. At the time
of writing, the CBOR website lists implementations for 16
languages.
Avro and Protocol Buffers both allow storage of untagged data, but
because they rely on the data schema for this, their implementation
is considerably more complex than CBOR. Using Avro or Protocol
Buffers in an unsupported environment would require notably greater
development effort compared to CBOR.
A test program was written which reads input from a PCAP file and
writes output using one of two basic structures; either a simple
structure, where each query/response pair is represented in a single
record entry, or the C-DNS block structure.
The resulting output files were then compressed using a variety of
common general-purpose lossless compression tools to explore the
compressibility of the formats. The compression tools employed were:
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o snzip [12]. A command line compression tool based on the Google
Snappy [13] library.
o lz4 [14]. The command line compression tool from the reference C
LZ4 implementation.
o gzip [15]. The ubiquitous GNU zip tool.
o zstd [16]. Compression using the Zstandard algorithm.
o xz [17]. A popular compression tool noted for high compression.
In all cases the compression tools were run using their default
settings.
Note that this draft does not mandate the use of compression, nor any
particular compression scheme, but it anticipates that in practice
output data will be subject to general-purpose compression, and so
this should be taken into consideration.
"test.pcap", a 662Mb capture of sample data from a root instance was
used for the comparison. The following table shows the formatted
size and size after compression (abbreviated to Comp. in the table
headers), together with the task resident set size (RSS) and the user
time taken by the compression. File sizes are in Mb, RSS in kb and
user time in seconds.
+-------------+-----------+-------+------------+-------+-----------+
| Format | File size | Comp. | Comp. size | RSS | User time |
+-------------+-----------+-------+------------+-------+-----------+
| PCAP | 661.87 | snzip | 212.48 | 2696 | 1.26 |
| | | lz4 | 181.58 | 6336 | 1.35 |
| | | gzip | 153.46 | 1428 | 18.20 |
| | | zstd | 87.07 | 3544 | 4.27 |
| | | xz | 49.09 | 97416 | 160.79 |
| | | | | | |
| JSON simple | 4113.92 | snzip | 603.78 | 2656 | 5.72 |
| | | lz4 | 386.42 | 5636 | 5.25 |
| | | gzip | 271.11 | 1492 | 73.00 |
| | | zstd | 133.43 | 3284 | 8.68 |
| | | xz | 51.98 | 97412 | 600.74 |
| | | | | | |
| Avro simple | 640.45 | snzip | 148.98 | 2656 | 0.90 |
| | | lz4 | 111.92 | 5828 | 0.99 |
| | | gzip | 103.07 | 1540 | 11.52 |
| | | zstd | 49.08 | 3524 | 2.50 |
| | | xz | 22.87 | 97308 | 90.34 |
| | | | | | |
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| CBOR simple | 764.82 | snzip | 164.57 | 2664 | 1.11 |
| | | lz4 | 120.98 | 5892 | 1.13 |
| | | gzip | 110.61 | 1428 | 12.88 |
| | | zstd | 54.14 | 3224 | 2.77 |
| | | xz | 23.43 | 97276 | 111.48 |
| | | | | | |
| PBuf simple | 749.51 | snzip | 167.16 | 2660 | 1.08 |
| | | lz4 | 123.09 | 5824 | 1.14 |
| | | gzip | 112.05 | 1424 | 12.75 |
| | | zstd | 53.39 | 3388 | 2.76 |
| | | xz | 23.99 | 97348 | 106.47 |
| | | | | | |
| JSON block | 519.77 | snzip | 106.12 | 2812 | 0.93 |
| | | lz4 | 104.34 | 6080 | 0.97 |
| | | gzip | 57.97 | 1604 | 12.70 |
| | | zstd | 61.51 | 3396 | 3.45 |
| | | xz | 27.67 | 97524 | 169.10 |
| | | | | | |
| Avro block | 60.45 | snzip | 48.38 | 2688 | 0.20 |
| | | lz4 | 48.78 | 8540 | 0.22 |
| | | gzip | 39.62 | 1576 | 2.92 |
| | | zstd | 29.63 | 3612 | 1.25 |
| | | xz | 18.28 | 97564 | 25.81 |
| | | | | | |
| CBOR block | 75.25 | snzip | 53.27 | 2684 | 0.24 |
| | | lz4 | 51.88 | 8008 | 0.28 |
| | | gzip | 41.17 | 1548 | 4.36 |
| | | zstd | 30.61 | 3476 | 1.48 |
| | | xz | 18.15 | 97556 | 38.78 |
| | | | | | |
| PBuf block | 67.98 | snzip | 51.10 | 2636 | 0.24 |
| | | lz4 | 52.39 | 8304 | 0.24 |
| | | gzip | 40.19 | 1520 | 3.63 |
| | | zstd | 31.61 | 3576 | 1.40 |
| | | xz | 17.94 | 97440 | 33.99 |
+-------------+-----------+-------+------------+-------+-----------+
The above results are discussed in the following sections.
C.1. Comparison with full PCAP files
An important first consideration is whether moving away from PCAP
offers significant benefits.
The simple binary formats are typically larger than PCAP, even though
they omit some information such as Ethernet MAC addresses. But not
only do they require less CPU to compress than PCAP, the resulting
compressed files are smaller than compressed PCAP.
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C.2. Simple versus block coding
The intention of the block coding is to perform data de-duplication
on query/response records within the block. The simple and block
formats above store exactly the same information for each query/
response record. This information is parsed from the DNS traffic in
the input PCAP file, and in all cases each field has an identifier
and the field data is typed.
The data de-duplication on the block formats show an order of
magnitude reduction in the size of the format file size against the
simple formats. As would be expected, the compression tools are able
to find and exploit a lot of this duplication, but as the de-
duplication process uses knowledge of DNS traffic, it is able to
retain a size advantage. This advantage reduces as stronger
compression is applied, as again would be expected, but even with the
strongest compression applied the block formatted data remains around
75% of the size of the simple format and its compression requires
roughly a third of the CPU time.
C.3. Binary versus text formats
Text data formats offer many advantages over binary formats,
particularly in the areas of ad-hoc data inspection and extraction.
It was therefore felt worthwhile to carry out a direct comparison,
implementing JSON versions of the simple and block formats.
Concentrating on JSON block format, the format files produced are a
significant fraction of an order of magnitude larger than binary
formats. The impact on file size after compression is as might be
expected from that starting point; the stronger compression produces
files that are 150% of the size of similarly compressed binary
format, and require over 4x more CPU to compress.
C.4. Performance
Concentrating again on the block formats, all three produce format
files that are close to an order of magnitude smaller that the
original "test.pcap" file. CBOR produces the largest files and Avro
the smallest, 20% smaller than CBOR.
However, once compression is taken into account, the size difference
narrows. At medium compression (with gzip), the size difference is
4%. Using strong compression (with xz) the difference reduces to 2%,
with Avro the largest and Protocol Buffers the smallest, although
CBOR and Protocol Buffers require slightly more compression CPU.
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The measurements presented above do not include data on the CPU
required to generate the format files. Measurements indicate that
writing Avro requires 10% more CPU than CBOR or Protocol Buffers. It
appears, therefore, that Avro's advantage in compression CPU usage is
probably offset by a larger CPU requirement in writing Avro.
C.5. Conclusions
The above assessments lead us to the choice of a binary format file
using blocking.
As noted previously, this draft anticipates that output data will be
subject to compression. There is no compelling case for one
particular binary serialisation format in terms of either final file
size or machine resources consumed, so the choice must be largely
based on other factors. CBOR was therefore chosen as the binary
serialisation format for the reasons listed in Section 5.
C.6. Block size choice
Given the choice of a CBOR format using blocking, the question arises
of what an appropriate default value for the maximum number of query/
response pairs in a block should be. This has two components; what
is the impact on performance of using different block sizes in the
format file, and what is the impact on the size of the format file
before and after compression.
The following table addresses the performance question, showing the
impact on the performance of a C++ program converting "test.pcap" to
C-DNS. File size is in Mb, resident set size (RSS) in kb.
+------------+-----------+--------+-----------+
| Block size | File size | RSS | User time |
+------------+-----------+--------+-----------+
| 1000 | 133.46 | 612.27 | 15.25 |
| 5000 | 89.85 | 676.82 | 14.99 |
| 10000 | 76.87 | 752.40 | 14.53 |
| 20000 | 67.86 | 750.75 | 14.49 |
| 40000 | 61.88 | 736.30 | 14.29 |
| 80000 | 58.08 | 694.16 | 14.28 |
| 160000 | 55.94 | 733.84 | 14.44 |
| 320000 | 54.41 | 799.20 | 13.97 |
+------------+-----------+--------+-----------+
Increasing block size, therefore, tends to increase maximum RSS a
little, with no significant effect (if anything a small reduction) on
CPU consumption.
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The following table demonstrates the effect of increasing block size
on output file size for different compressions.
+------------+--------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
| Block size | None | snzip | lz4 | gzip | zstd | xz |
+------------+--------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
| 1000 | 133.46 | 90.52 | 90.03 | 74.65 | 44.78 | 25.63 |
| 5000 | 89.85 | 59.69 | 59.43 | 46.99 | 37.33 | 22.34 |
| 10000 | 76.87 | 50.39 | 50.28 | 38.94 | 33.62 | 21.09 |
| 20000 | 67.86 | 43.91 | 43.90 | 33.24 | 32.62 | 20.16 |
| 40000 | 61.88 | 39.63 | 39.69 | 29.44 | 28.72 | 19.52 |
| 80000 | 58.08 | 36.93 | 37.01 | 27.05 | 26.25 | 19.00 |
| 160000 | 55.94 | 35.10 | 35.06 | 25.44 | 24.56 | 19.63 |
| 320000 | 54.41 | 33.87 | 33.74 | 24.36 | 23.44 | 18.66 |
+------------+--------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
There is obviously scope for tuning the default block size to the
compression being employed, traffic characteristics, frequency of
output file rollover etc. Using a strong compression scheme, block
sizes over 10,000 query/response pairs would seem to offer limited
improvements.
Authors' Addresses
John Dickinson
Sinodun IT
Magdalen Centre
Oxford Science Park
Oxford OX4 4GA
United Kingdom
Email: jad@sinodun.com
Jim Hague
Sinodun IT
Magdalen Centre
Oxford Science Park
Oxford OX4 4GA
United Kingdom
Email: jim@sinodun.com
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Sara Dickinson
Sinodun IT
Magdalen Centre
Oxford Science Park
Oxford OX4 4GA
United Kingdom
Email: sara@sinodun.com
Terry Manderson
ICANN
12025 Waterfront Drive
Suite 300
Los Angeles CA 90094-2536
Email: terry.manderson@icann.org
John Bond
ICANN
12025 Waterfront Drive
Suite 300
Los Angeles CA 90094-2536
Email: john.bond@icann.org
Dickinson, et al. Expires June 15, 2019 [Page 77]
