A New Look at the Old Domain Name System

The Domain Name System (DNS) is undergoing fundamental changes in both design and operations, but these changes are mostly taking place in piecemeal extensions. In this paper we consider how to maintain a simple and robust DNS in the face of these inevitable and essential changes. We consider some of the features that the modern DNS is trying to incorporate and we look at the ensuing problems from a systematic perspective. We identify some key architectural issues and design principles that we believe are essential to the successful integration of such features in the DNS infrastructure. Following these principles, we sketch two possible mechanisms that would improve the availability and timeliness, and decouple the zone management from the query/response data-path of DNS while being deployable in parallel and incrementally with respect to the existing infrastructure.