mDNS X-link review

mDNS normally allows MAC entities to make their services known on MAC Bridged LANs without use of centralized discovery services. Multicast limits the range of this publication to LANs able to forward mDNS frames. A Bridge is a mechanism transparent to end stations on LANs interconnected by Bridges designated to forward frames normally through participation in a Spanning Tree Algorithm. A Bridge forwards frames based on prior source MAC associations with incoming frames on different LAN ports. Source MAC and LAN port associations are recommended to expire in 300 seconds. Frames containing source multicast MAC are silently discarded as invalid. Frames containing a destination MAC on the same LAN port already associated with the MAC are silently discarded. A valid incoming frame with a destination not previously associated with a different LAN port is forwarded (flooded) to all other LAN ports, otherwise when a MAC destination address is associated with a different LAN port from which the frame was received, the frame is selectively forwarded to this port. All broadcast and multicast MAC are flooded to all other LAN ports because the MAC does not represent a valid source. Flooding operation may create a storm of replicated frames having an unknown MAC destination whenever forwarding is enabled on LAN ports connected in a loop. In IEEE 802.11 wireless networks, multicast frames are transmitted at a low data rate supported by all receivers. Multicast on wireless networks may thereby lower overall network throughput. Some network administrators block multicast traffic or convert it to a series of link-layer unicast frames. Wireless links may be orders of magnitude less reliable than their wired counterparts. To improve transmission reliability, the IEEE 802.11 MAC requires positive acknowledgement of unicast frames. It does not, however, support positive acknowledgement of multicast frames. As a result, it is common to observe much higher loss of multicast frames on wireless compared against wired network technologies.

Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) supports multicast on IPv4 networks. Multicast Listener Discovery (MLD) supports multicast management on IPv6 networks using ICMPv6 messaging in contrast to IGMP's bare IP encapsulation. This management allows routers to announce their multicast membership to neighboring routers. To optimize which LANs receive forwarded multicast frames, IGMP or MLD snooping can be used to determine the presence of listeners as a means to permit selective forwarding of multicast frames.

RBridges are compatible with previous IEEE 802.1 customer bridges as well as IPv4 and IPv6 routers and end nodes. RBridges may support either IEEE 802.3 or some other link technology. RBridges are invisible to current IP routers as bridges are and, like routers, terminate the Bridge spanning tree protocol. The RBridge design supports VLANs and optimization of the distribution of multi-destination frames based on VLAN ID or on IP-derived multicast groups. It also allows unicast forwarding tables at transit RBridges to be sized according to the number of RBridges (rather than the number of end nodes), which allows their forwarding tables to be substantially smaller than in conventional customer bridges. Whether an additional layer can be added within the RBridge to implement selective multicast forwarding is unknown.

L2TP VPN with experimental attempt to handle multicast by mitigating redundant traffic which remains fairly problematic.

There are several products being introduced into the market that attempt to solve the problem stated in the charter. They normally use VLAN to selectively extend multicast forwarding beyond Bridge limitations. This does not represent a general solution but can support specific services being offered by dynamic devices within a local IP address space.

Rather than using MAC as an exchange basis, IP addresses made visible by DNS that conform with can be used instead. Direct access to an IP address is better assured with a single DHCP or server for IPv4 and IPv6 respectively that responds to interconnected networks. In such a configuration, it is possible to have DHCP indicate which DNS server is to be used as a means to offer combined local and Internet namespace. Automation needed to populate the information published in DNS normally depends on Kerberos and LDAP servers supporting either a campus or corporate network. Automated conversion of mDNS into unicast DNS can be problematic from a security standpoint as can the propagation of multicast frames. mDNS only requires compliance with rather than IDNA2008 . This means mDNS does not ensure instances are visually unique and may contain spaces and punctuation not permitted by IDNA2008. mDNS also permits name compression of SRV target names that DNS currently forbids. Replacing ASCII punctuation and spaces in the label with the '_' character, except when located as the leftmost character, may reduce some handling issues related to end of string parsing, since labels in DNS normally do not contain spaces or punctuation. Nevertheless, DNS is able to handle such labels within sub-domains of registered domains. Services outside the ".local." domain may have applications obtaining domain search lists provided by DHCP ( and for IPv4 and IPv6 respectively or RA DNSSL also for IPv6. Internet domains need to be published in DNS as A-Labels because IDNA2008 compliance depends on A-label enforcement by registrars. Therefore A-Labels and not U-Labels must be published in DNS for Internet domains. There is also a DNS extension to support the live browse feature found in mDNS. The SRV scheme used by mDNS has also been widely adopted in the Windows OS since it offered a functional replacement for Windows Internet Name Service (WINS) as their initial attempt which lacked sufficient name hierarchy. It is unknown whether sufficient filtering of mDNS to expose just those services likely needed will sufficiently protect wireless networks. The extent RBridge use and something analogous to IGMP or MLD for selective forwarding might help to mitigate otherwise spurious traffic is unknown. Open source of corporate server implementations based on a Debian distro are currently available with plug-ins able to support Windows and OS X.

transport protocol was designed to efficiently exchange frames rather than byte streams. It can operate with partial reliability while still allowing receivers to detect and request specific lost frames. This might be possible while also using multicast MACs and IP Addresses. This transport also extends the DNS 16 bit transactional nonce with an additional 32 bit random session ID.

This document requires no IANA consideration.

Layer 2 Bridging that might be used to extend mDNS is not inherently secure. See for a list of possible concerns and mitigation methods. Conveying both the MAC and IP address beyond the LAN may enable attacks that would have otherwise been prevented. Moving mDNS services into DNS MUST only expose services able to withstand the greater exposure. Establish an implied ".local." as the first domain offered in a domain search list. This will better ensure local services receive higher priority. This scheme may result in a 3 second delay. This delay might be mitigated by implying the ".local." domain last instead when there are fewer than three labels and they are also suitable for DNS.

The authors wish to acknowledge valuable contributions from the following: Dave Rand