RFC 2782 (rfc2782) - Page 3 of 12

A DNS RR for specifying the location of services (DNS SRV)

RFC 2782                       DNS SRV RR                  February 2000


        Some widely used services, notably POP, don't have a single
        universal name.  If Assigned Numbers names the service
        indicated, that name is the only name which is legal for SRV
        lookups.  The Service is case insensitive.

   Proto
        The symbolic name of the desired protocol, with an underscore
        (_) prepended to prevent collisions with DNS labels that occur
        in nature.  _TCP and _UDP are at present the most useful values
        for this field, though any name defined by Assigned Numbers or
        locally may be used (as for Service).  The Proto is case
        insensitive.

   Name
        The domain this RR refers to.  The SRV RR is unique in that the
        name one searches for is not this name; the example near the end
        shows this clearly.

   TTL
        Standard DNS meaning [RFC 1035].

   Class
        Standard DNS meaning [RFC 1035].   SRV records occur in the IN
        Class.

   Priority
        The priority of this target host.  A client MUST attempt to
        contact the target host with the lowest-numbered priority it can
        reach; target hosts with the same priority SHOULD be tried in an
        order defined by the weight field.  The range is 0-65535.  This
        is a 16 bit unsigned integer in network byte order.

   Weight
        A server selection mechanism.  The weight field specifies a
        relative weight for entries with the same priority. Larger
        weights SHOULD be given a proportionately higher probability of
        being selected. The range of this number is 0-65535.  This is a
        16 bit unsigned integer in network byte order.  Domain
        administrators SHOULD use Weight 0 when there isn't any server
        selection to do, to make the RR easier to read for humans (less
        noisy).  In the presence of records containing weights greater
        than 0, records with weight 0 should have a very small chance of
        being selected.

        In the absence of a protocol whose specification calls for the
        use of other weighting information, a client arranges the SRV
        RRs of the same Priority in the order in which target hosts,




Gulbrandsen, et al.         Standards Track