Selecting Labels for Use with Conventional DNS and Other Resolution Systems in DNS-Based Service Discovery

Abstract

Despite its name, DNS-Based Service Discovery (DNS-SD) can use naming systems other than DNS when looking for services. Moreover, when it uses DNS, DNS-SD uses the full capability of DNS, rather than using a subset of available octets. This is of particular relevance where some environments use DNS labels that conform to Internationalized Domain Names for Applications (IDNA), and other environments use labels containing Unicode characters (such as containing octets corresponding to characters encoded as UTF-8). In order for DNS-SD to be used effectively in environments where multiple different name systems and conventions for their operation are in use, it is important to attend to differences in the underlying technology and operational environment. This memo presents an outline of the requirements for the selection of labels for conventional DNS and other resolution systems when they are expected to interoperate in this manner.