Re: tsig-04 Time expire/Time Signed

[Tom Limoncelli <tal@research.bell-labs.com>]

Mark.Andrews@cmis.CSIRO.AU wrote:
> 
>  These fields are specified as unsigned 32 bit ints.  Now these
>  have fields have a limited lifetime of ~110 years (with
>  potential implementation problems in 40 years time).  Now while
>  most of us are unlikely to be around in 110 years that is a chance
>  that the TSIG will still be in use in 110 years time.  Remeber lots
>  of current code is already ~40 years old and is still in use.
> 
>Now SIG has a similar problem to this and I'm not sure what they
>intended to do about this.

I'm stating the obvious but... while other protocols come and go DNS is
so ingrained in all code that preventing such time/date problems now is
worth the problems we prevent in the future.  I'm tempted to say that
major DNS problems can only be fixed when we change IP stacks (IPv4 to
IPv6, IPv6 to IPv7) but somehow I doubt even that is true.  Could we
change the resolution (multiple by 4 before using this value, divide by
4 before storing this value), add another 8 bits, or something?

Either that or everyone on this mailing list has to promise to not have
grandchildren.  1/2 :-)

110 years just isn't a long time.

--Tom