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The weird and wonderful world of DNS LOC records (2014)
- MiscIdeaMaker99 2y agoBummer. The example in the articles doesn't work. # dig geekatlas.com LOC @1.1.1.1 ; <<>> DiG 9.20.0 <<>> geekatlas.com LOC @1.1.1.1 ;; global options: +cmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 19487 ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 1 ;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION: ; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 1232 ;; QUESTION SECTION: ;geekatlas.com. IN LOC ;; AUTHORITY SECTION: geekatlas.com. 300 IN SOA ns1.namefind.com. dns.jomax.net. 2023031500 28800 7200 604800 300 ;; Query time: 22 msec ;; SERVER: 1.1.1.1#53(1.1.1.1) (UDP) ;; WHEN: Mon Jul 29 08:46:31 EDT 2024 ;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 104
- jgrahamc 2y agoYeah. Sorry about that! I wrote that 10 years ago and had totally forgotten about it. And I shut down The Geek Atlas' web site a long time ago.
- BrandoElFollito 2y ago> And I shut down The Geek Atlas' web site a long time ago. Which if I may notice is a shame.
- jgrahamc 2y agoIt got basically zero traffic.
- BrandoElFollito 2y agoIt' a shame, it was good stuff. We exchanged several emails back in the early 2000's when I was reading your blog of the time. And I have the book :)
- dgl 2y agoWhile the example here is broken, http://find.me.uk http://find.me.uk still works: $ dig loc SW1A1AA.find.me.uk ; <<>> DiG 9.10.6 <<>> loc SW1A1AA.find.me.uk ;; global options: +cmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 63530 ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1 ;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION: ; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 512 ;; QUESTION SECTION: ;SW1A1AA.find.me.uk. IN LOC ;; ANSWER SECTION: SW1A1AA.find.me.uk. 21600 IN LOC 51 30 3.637 N 0 8 29.624 W 0.00m 0.00m 0.00m 0.00m
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- teddyh 2y agoSee also: DNS LOC: Geo-enabling the Domain Name System <https://www.ckdhr.com/dns-loc/ https://www.ckdhr.com/dns-loc/>
- LinuxBender 2y agoI found this [1] for generating LOC records using Google Maps. Verified it works on another machine, my daily driver was blocking something. Also verified coordinates that it generates. [1] - https://dnsloc.net/ https://dnsloc.net/
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- bonyt 2y agoA friend of mine passed away last year and I use a domain named after her as a small memorial, sally.pro. I just gave it a LOC record pointing to a bench in the park that we adopted for her.
- nickburns 2y agoI shall have a rest on this bench in honor of your friend if I'm ever in Astoria Park.
- vamega 2y agoI’m in Astoria, I’ll go pay a visit this week!
- edent 2y agoIf you have a geotagged photo of the bench, we'd be honoured to host it on https://openbenches.org/ https://openbenches.org/
- ramon156 2y agoIts insane how many there are in the UK
- edent 2y agoTo be fair, we are a UK based site - and most of my friends are in the UK. But, yeah, even in other Anglophone countries I've visited there haven't been as many memorial benches.
- bonyt 2y agoThanks, I’ve uploaded some photos. https://openbenches.org/bench/33460 https://openbenches.org/bench/33460
- edent 2y agoLooks gorgeous! Much appreciated.
- Neil44 2y agoI've just given us a LOC record, do I get a prize?
- c-linkage 2y agoYou get to write the follow-up article about how posting LOC records in DNS is a security hole! :D
- coolkil 2y agoFirstly I never knew Loc records existed… interesting to read something like this. Secondly I think cloudflare will see an (sizable???) increase in Loc records due to this article
- avipars 2y agoThat would be cool ;)
- ChilledTonic 2y agoThis is interesting, but can anyone give me an example of using this for beyond just a simple easter egg? Presumably this had some real use to be added to the DNS spec.
- edent 2y agoDNS can contain all sorts of records that, at some point, someone thought was worth standardising. In this case, I assume it used to be so common for a sub-domain to refer to a single physical box that there was utility in knowing exactly where in the world it was. Cf https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html
- toast0 2y agoSeems like a reasonable way to track the locations of named items; especially if the location of the items is public and amenable to caching. Especially if you assume network clients are capable of general networking, and not limited to typical browser stuff. May also need to assume typical recursive DNS servers won't mess up your lookups, because that's not always a reasonable assumption anymore. For something modern like tracking a private fleet or your friends, you'd need to overlay access control or something. Something like how e164.arpa was conceptually going to be public, but ended up behind private networks so access control and cost accounting could be added.
- avipars 2y agoPossible use case from the RFC: "Some uses for the LOC RR have already been suggested, including the USENET backbone flow maps, a "visual traceroute" application showing the geographical path of an IP packet, and network management applications that could use LOC RRs to generate a map of hosts and routers being managed." https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1876#section-5.1 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1876#section-5.1
- aa-jv 2y agoThere are plenty of track-side boxes in the rail industry which could benefit from this. See also point-of-presence installations - if you have to drive 2 hours to flick a switch, it'd be nice to have the LOC properly configured for the dead box..
- mrngm 2y agoEarlier (and only) submission in 2014: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7508234 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7508234 Perhaps the title of this post can be edited to include [2014] as well.
- jgrahamc 2y agoBack in 2014 when I wrote this I said "CloudFlare handles millions of DNS records; of those just 743 are LOCs." I asked the team for an update and that number is now... 3,198.
- xg15 2y agoThat's a 300% increase!
- RamRodification 2y agoThat's almost 400%!
- dghughes 2y agoThat's 33% more than 300%.
- RamRodification 2y agoThat's almost 50% more!
- jasonjayr 2y agoHmm. Is there a tool to ping a list of LOC records and feed/update OSM automatically?
- VoidWhisperer 2y agoI feel like you'd probably want some human review in there somewhere, otherwise that sounds ripe for abuse (and a subsequent headache that the OSM community probably doesn't want to deal with)
- pests 2y agoI think it's pretty cool, could just be another layer/whatever. I know OSM is set up for that kind data intermingling. Cloudflare only has ~3000 LOC records so I doubt the entirety of the Internet is more than an order of magnitude bigger. I think it would be pretty cool to see a map with any domains near me, etc.
- bo0tzz 2y agoI don't think that exist, but you've nerdsniped me into trying to build it (or at least the collection side). Does anybody have better ideas than just trying a list of all known DNS names?
- dpifke 2y agoLOC on reverse DNS seems a much more elegant solution than RFC 8805 Geofeeds (https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8805 https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8805). In particular, it solves the discovery issue discussed in RFC 9092 (https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9092 https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9092), allows real-time updates, and would make it easier for ISPs to delegate maintenance of geolocation records to customers.
- philipwhiuk 2y agoI naively assumed this would be about localised caching. You'd think straight-line distance would be a reasonable proxy for speed. Hence you could have * google.com <LOC San Francisco> * google.com <LOC London> and pick the right one but that's not really how it works at all :(
- nvy 2y agoI'd imagine that there are some sharp edge cases where a nearby straight-line distance is a suboptimal choice due to peculiarities of submarine cables or irregular point to point links of some other sort.
- ratorx 2y agoAnd that’s only on the physical layer. Then you’d get into the weird and wonderful world of BGP routing.
- JohnMakin 2y agoWould be fun to make a scavenger hunt game using these.
- avipars 2y agoI was going to add it to a CTF challenge which is why I found this article.
- hurpdurpdurp 2y agoOne of many strange features in DNS. I seem to recall a talk a few years ago where someone enumerated a variety of weird DNS capabilities and some interesting security consequences, but I don't remember the name of the talk or the speaker. Does anyone happen to know what I'm half-remembering?
- 8organicbits 2y agoPerhaps? https://archive.fosdem.org/2023/schedule/event/dns_bizarre_and_unusual_uses_of_dns/ https://archive.fosdem.org/2023/schedule/event/dns_bizarre_a...
- hurpdurpdurp 2y agoNot it, but really excellent! Thanks
- avipars 2y agoAnother good one is HINFO
- teddyh 2y agoI also like RP.
- fanf2 2y agoI put a LOC record on cam.ac.uk set to 10km in diameter, so it basically covers the official precincts of the university which require that students live within 3 miles of the centre of the city.