Network Working Group                                    D. Eastlake 3rd
Request for Comments: 4343                         Motorola Laboratories
Updates: 1034, 1035, 2181                                   January 2006
Category: Standards Track


       Domain Name System (DNS) Case Insensitivity Clarification

Status of This Memo

   This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the
   Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
   improvements.  Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet
   Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state
   and status of this protocol.  Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2006).

Abstract

   Domain Name System (DNS) names are "case insensitive".  This document
   explains exactly what that means and provides a clear specification
   of the rules.  This clarification updates RFCs 1034, 1035, and 2181.

Table of Contents

   1. Introduction ....................................................2
   2. Case Insensitivity of DNS Labels ................................2
      2.1. Escaping Unusual DNS Label Octets ..........................2
      2.2. Example Labels with Escapes ................................3
   3. Name Lookup, Label Types, and CLASS .............................3
      3.1. Original DNS Label Types ...................................4
      3.2. Extended Label Type Case Insensitivity Considerations ......4
      3.3. CLASS Case Insensitivity Considerations ....................4
   4. Case on Input and Output ........................................5
      4.1. DNS Output Case Preservation ...............................5
      4.2. DNS Input Case Preservation ................................5
   5. Internationalized Domain Names ..................................6
   6. Security Considerations .........................................6
   7. Acknowledgements ................................................7
   Normative References................................................7
   Informative References..............................................8

1.  Introduction

   The Domain Name System (DNS) is the global hierarchical replicated
   distributed database system for Internet addressing, mail proxy, and
   other information.  Each node in the DNS tree has a name consisting
   of zero or more labels [STD13, RFC1591, RFC2606] that are treated in
   a case insensitive fashion.  This document clarifies the meaning of
   "case insensitive" for the DNS.  This clarification updates RFCs
   1034, 1035 [STD13], and [RFC2181].

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
   document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].

2.  Case Insensitivity of DNS Labels

   DNS was specified in the era of [ASCII].  DNS names were expected to
   look like most host names or Internet email address right halves (the
   part after the at-sign, "@") or to be numeric, as in the in-addr.arpa
   part of the DNS name space.  For example,

       foo.example.net.
       aol.com.
       www.gnu.ai.mit.edu.
   or  69.2.0.192.in-addr.arpa.

   Case-varied alternatives to the above [RFC3092] would be DNS names
   like

       Foo.ExamplE.net.
       AOL.COM.
       WWW.gnu.AI.mit.EDU.
   or  69.2.0.192.in-ADDR.ARPA.

   However, the individual octets of which DNS names consist are not
   limited to valid ASCII character codes.  They are 8-bit bytes, and
   all values are allowed.  Many applications, however, interpret them
   as ASCII characters.

2.1.  Escaping Unusual DNS Label Octets

   In Master Files [STD13] and other human-readable and -writable ASCII
   contexts, an escape is needed for the byte value for period (0x2E,
   ".") and all octet values outside of the inclusive range from 0x21
   ("!") to 0x7E ("~").  That is to say, 0x2E and all octet values in
   the two inclusive ranges from 0x00 to 0x20 and from 0x7F to 0xFF.

   One typographic convention for octets that do not correspond to an
   ASCII printing graphic is to use a back-slash followed by the value
   of the octet as an unsigned integer represented by exactly three
   decimal digits.

   The same convention can be used for printing ASCII characters so that
   they will be treated as a normal label character.  This includes the
   back-slash character used in this convention itself, which can be
   expressed as \092 or \\, and the special label separator period
   ("."), which can be expressed as and \046 or \.  It is advisable to
   avoid using a backslash to quote an immediately following non-
   printing ASCII character code to avoid implementation difficulties.

   A back-slash followed by only one or two decimal digits is undefined.
   A back-slash followed by four decimal digits produces two octets, the
   first octet having the value of the first three digits considered as
   a decimal number, and the second octet being the character code for
   the fourth decimal digit.

2.2.  Example Labels with Escapes

   The first example below shows embedded spaces and a period (".")
   within a label.  The second one shows a 5-octet label where the
   second octet has all bits zero, the third is a backslash, and the
   fourth octet has all bits one.

         Donald\032E\.\032Eastlake\0323rd.example.
   and   a\000\\\255z.example.

3.  Name Lookup, Label Types, and CLASS

   According to the original DNS design decision, comparisons on name
   lookup for DNS queries should be case insensitive [STD13].  That is
   to say, a lookup string octet with a value in the inclusive range
   from 0x41 to 0x5A, the uppercase ASCII letters, MUST match the
   identical value and also match the corresponding value in the
   inclusive range from 0x61 to 0x7A, the lowercase ASCII letters.  A
   lookup string octet with a lowercase ASCII letter value MUST
   similarly match the identical value and also match the corresponding
   value in the uppercase ASCII letter range.

   (Historical note: The terms "uppercase" and "lowercase" were invented
   after movable type.  The terms originally referred to the two font
   trays for storing, in partitioned areas, the different physical type
   elements.  Before movable type, the nearest equivalent terms were
   "majuscule" and "minuscule".)

   One way to implement this rule would be to subtract 0x20 from all
   octets in the inclusive range from 0x61 to 0x7A before comparing
   octets.  Such an operation is commonly known as "case folding", but
   implementation via case folding is not required.  Note that the DNS
   case insensitivity does NOT correspond to the case folding specified
   in [ISO-8859-1] or [ISO-8859-2].  For example, the octets 0xDD (\221)
   and 0xFD (\253) do NOT match, although in other contexts, where they
   are interpreted as the upper- and lower-case version of "Y" with an
   acute accent, they might.

3.1.  Original DNS Label Types

   DNS labels in wire-encoded names have a type associated with them.
   The original DNS standard [STD13] had only two types: ASCII labels,
   with a length from zero to 63 octets, and indirect (or compression)
   labels, which consist of an offset pointer to a name location
   elsewhere in the wire encoding on a DNS message.  (The ASCII label of
   length zero is reserved for use as the name of the root node of the
   name tree.)  ASCII labels follow the ASCII case conventions described
   herein and, as stated above, can actually contain arbitrary byte
   values.  Indirect labels are, in effect, replaced by the name to
   which they point, which is then treated with the case insensitivity
   rules in this document.

3.2.  Extended Label Type Case Insensitivity Considerations

   DNS was extended by [RFC2671] so that additional label type numbers
   would be available.  (The only such type defined so far is the BINARY
   type [RFC2673], which is now Experimental [RFC3363].)

   The ASCII case insensitivity conventions only apply to ASCII labels;
   that is to say, label type 0x0, whether appearing directly or invoked
   by indirect labels.

3.3.  CLASS Case Insensitivity Considerations

   As described in [STD13] and [RFC2929], DNS has an additional axis for
   data location called CLASS.  The only CLASS in global use at this
   time is the "IN" (Internet) CLASS.

   The handling of DNS label case is not CLASS dependent.  With the
   original design of DNS, it was intended that a recursive DNS resolver
   be able to handle new CLASSes that were unknown at the time of its
   implementation.  This requires uniform handling of label case
   insensitivity.  Should it become desirable, for example, to allocate
   a CLASS with "case sensitive ASCII labels", it would be necessary to
   allocate a new label type for these labels.

4.  Case on Input and Output

   While ASCII label comparisons are case insensitive, [STD13] says case
   MUST be preserved on output and preserved when convenient on input.
   However, this means less than it would appear, since the preservation
   of case on output is NOT required when output is optimized by the use
   of indirect labels, as explained below.

4.1.  DNS Output Case Preservation

   [STD13] views the DNS namespace as a node tree.  ASCII output is as
   if a name were marshaled by taking the label on the node whose name
   is to be output, converting it to a typographically encoded ASCII
   string, walking up the tree outputting each label encountered, and
   preceding all labels but the first with a period (".").  Wire output
   follows the same sequence, but each label is wire encoded, and no
   periods are inserted.  No "case conversion" or "case folding" is done
   during such output operations, thus "preserving" case.  However, to
   optimize output, indirect labels may be used to point to names
   elsewhere in the DNS answer.  In determining whether the name to be
   pointed to (for example, the QNAME) is the "same" as the remainder of
   the name being optimized, the case insensitive comparison specified
   above is done.  Thus, such optimization may easily destroy the output
   preservation of case.  This type of optimization is commonly called
   "name compression".

4.2.  DNS Input Case Preservation

   Originally, DNS data came from an ASCII Master File as defined in
   [STD13] or a zone transfer.  DNS Dynamic update and incremental zone
   transfers [RFC1995] have been added as a source of DNS data [RFC2136,
   RFC3007].  When a node in the DNS name tree is created by any of such
   inputs, no case conversion is done.  Thus, the case of ASCII labels
   is preserved if they are for nodes being created.  However, when a
   name label is input for a node that already exists in DNS data being
   held, the situation is more complex.  Implementations are free to
   retain the case first loaded for such a label, to allow new input to
   override the old case, or even to maintain separate copies preserving
   the input case.

   For example, if data with owner name "foo.bar.example" [RFC3092] is
   loaded and then later data with owner name "xyz.BAR.example" is
   input, the name of the label on the "bar.example" node (i.e., "bar")
   might or might not be changed to "BAR" in the DNS stored data.  Thus,
   later retrieval of data stored under "xyz.bar.example" in this case
   can use "xyz.BAR.example" in all returned data, use "xyz.bar.example"
   in all returned data, or even, when more than one RR is being
   returned, use a mixture of these two capitalizations.  This last case

   is unlikely, as optimization of answer length through indirect labels
   tends to cause only one copy of the name tail ("bar.example" or
   "BAR.example") to be used for all returned RRs.  Note that none of
   this has any effect on the number or completeness of the RR set
   returned, only on the case of the names in the RR set returned.

   The same considerations apply when inputting multiple data records
   with owner names differing only in case.  For example, if an "A"
   record is the first resource record stored under owner name
   "xyz.BAR.example" and then a second "A" record is stored under
   "XYZ.BAR.example", the second MAY be stored with the first (lower
   case initial label) name, the second MAY override the first so that
   only an uppercase initial label is retained, or both capitalizations
   MAY be kept in the DNS stored data.  In any case, a retrieval with
   either capitalization will retrieve all RRs with either
   capitalization.

   Note that the order of insertion into a server database of the DNS
   name tree nodes that appear in a Master File is not defined so that
   the results of inconsistent capitalization in a Master File are
   unpredictable output capitalization.

5.  Internationalized Domain Names

   A scheme has been adopted for "internationalized domain names" and
   "internationalized labels" as described in [RFC3490, RFC3454,
   RFC3491, and RFC3492].  It makes most of [UNICODE] available through
   a separate application level transformation from internationalized
   domain name to DNS domain name and from DNS domain name to
   internationalized domain name.  Any case insensitivity that
   internationalized domain names and labels have varies depending on
   the script and is handled entirely as part of the transformation
   described in [RFC3454] and [RFC3491], which should be seen for
   further details.  This is not a part of the DNS as standardized in
   STD 13.

6.  Security Considerations

   The equivalence of certain DNS label types with case differences, as
   clarified in this document, can lead to security problems.  For
   example, a user could be confused by believing that two domain names
   differing only in case were actually different names.

   Furthermore, a domain name may be used in contexts other than the
   DNS.  It could be used as a case sensitive index into some database
   or file system.  Or it could be interpreted as binary data by some
   integrity or authentication code system.  These problems can usually
   be handled by using a standardized or "canonical" form of the DNS

   ASCII type labels; that is, always mapping the ASCII letter value
   octets in ASCII labels to some specific pre-chosen case, either
   uppercase or lower case.  An example of a canonical form for domain
   names (and also a canonical ordering for them) appears in Section 6
   of [RFC4034].  See also [RFC3597].

   Finally, a non-DNS name may be stored into DNS with the false
   expectation that case will always be preserved.  For example,
   although this would be quite rare, on a system with case sensitive
   email address local parts, an attempt to store two Responsible Person
   (RP) [RFC1183] records that differed only in case would probably
   produce unexpected results that might have security implications.
   That is because the entire email address, including the possibly case
   sensitive local or left-hand part, is encoded into a DNS name in a
   readable fashion where the case of some letters might be changed on
   output as described above.

7.  Acknowledgements

   The contributions to this document by Rob Austein, Olafur
   Gudmundsson, Daniel J. Anderson, Alan Barrett, Marc Blanchet, Dana,
   Andreas Gustafsson, Andrew Main, Thomas Narten, and Scott Seligman
   are gratefully acknowledged.

Normative References

   [ASCII]      ANSI, "USA Standard Code for Information Interchange",
                X3.4, American National Standards Institute: New York,
                1968.

   [RFC1995]    Ohta, M., "Incremental Zone Transfer in DNS", RFC 1995,
                August 1996.

   [RFC2119]    Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
                Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

   [RFC2136]    Vixie, P., Thomson,  S., Rekhter, Y., and J. Bound,
                "Dynamic Updates in the Domain Name System (DNS
                UPDATE)", RFC 2136, April 1997.

   [RFC2181]     Elz, R. and R. Bush, "Clarifications to the DNS
                Specification", RFC 2181, July 1997.

   [RFC3007]    Wellington, B., "Secure Domain Name System (DNS) Dynamic
                Update", RFC 3007, November 2000.

   [RFC3597]    Gustafsson, A., "Handling of Unknown DNS Resource Record
                (RR) Types", RFC 3597, September 2003.

   [RFC4034]    Arends, R., Austein, R., Larson, M., Massey, D., and S.
                Rose, "Resource Records for the DNS Security
                Extensions", RFC 4034, March 2005.

   [STD13]      Mockapetris, P., "Domain names - concepts and
                facilities", STD 13, RFC 1034, November 1987.

                Mockapetris, P., "Domain names - implementation and
                specification", STD 13, RFC 1035, November 1987.

Informative References

   [ISO-8859-1] International Standards Organization, Standard for
                Character Encodings, Latin-1.

   [ISO-8859-2] International Standards Organization, Standard for
                Character Encodings, Latin-2.

   [RFC1183]    Everhart, C., Mamakos, L., Ullmann, R., and P.
                Mockapetris, "New DNS RR Definitions", RFC 1183, October
                1990.

   [RFC1591]    Postel, J., "Domain Name System Structure and
                Delegation", RFC 1591, March 1994.

   [RFC2606]    Eastlake 3rd, D. and A. Panitz, "Reserved Top Level DNS
                Names", BCP 32, RFC 2606, June 1999.

   [RFC2929]    Eastlake 3rd, D., Brunner-Williams, E., and B. Manning,
                "Domain Name System (DNS) IANA Considerations", BCP 42,
                RFC 2929, September 2000.

   [RFC2671]    Vixie, P., "Extension Mechanisms for DNS (EDNS0)", RFC
                2671, August 1999.

   [RFC2673]    Crawford, M., "Binary Labels in the Domain Name System",
                RFC 2673, August 1999.

   [RFC3092]    Eastlake 3rd, D., Manros, C., and E. Raymond, "Etymology
                of "Foo"", RFC 3092, 1 April 2001.

   [RFC3363]    Bush, R., Durand, A., Fink, B., Gudmundsson, O., and T.
                Hain, "Representing Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6)
                Addresses in the Domain Name System (DNS)", RFC 3363,
                August 2002.

   [RFC3454]    Hoffman, P. and M. Blanchet, "Preparation of
                Internationalized Strings ("stringprep")", RFC 3454,
                December 2002.

   [RFC3490]    Faltstrom, P., Hoffman, P., and A. Costello,
                "Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications
                (IDNA)", RFC 3490, March 2003.

   [RFC3491]    Hoffman, P. and M. Blanchet, "Nameprep: A Stringprep
                Profile for Internationalized Domain Names (IDN)", RFC
                3491, March 2003.

   [RFC3492]    Costello, A., "Punycode: A Bootstring encoding of
                Unicode for Internationalized Domain Names in
                Applications (IDNA)", RFC 3492, March 2003.

   [UNICODE]    The Unicode Consortium, "The Unicode Standard",
                <http://www.unicode.org/unicode/standard/standard.html>.

Author's Address

   Donald E. Eastlake 3rd
   Motorola Laboratories
   155 Beaver Street
   Milford, MA 01757 USA

   Phone: +1 508-786-7554 (w)
   EMail: Donald.Eastlake@motorola.com

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