The DNS Zone Version Option
RFC 9660, “The DNS Zone Version Option”, is a Proposed Standard document published in October 2024 by H. Salgado, M. Vergara, D. Wessels. The canonical text is published by the RFC Editor.
Abstract
The DNS ZONEVERSION option is a way for DNS clients to request, and for authoritative DNS servers to provide, information regarding the version of the zone from which a response is generated. The SERIAL field from the Start of Authority (SOA) resource record (RR) is a good example of a zone's version, and it is the only one defined by this specification. Additional version types may be defined by future specifications.
Including zone version data in a response simplifies and improves the quality of debugging and diagnostics since the version and the DNS answer are provided atomically. This can be especially useful for zones and DNS providers that leverage IP anycast or multiple backend systems. It functions similarly to the DNS Name Server Identifier (NSID) option described in RFC 5001.
What “Proposed Standard” means
An entry-level standards-track specification: stable, peer-reviewed and a solid basis for implementation, though it may still evolve before becoming an Internet Standard.
The canonical text of RFC 9660 is hosted at rfc-editor.org. Available in HTML,TXT,PDF,XML.
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