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TELEMETRY.md

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Usual Firefox Telemetry is mostly unaffected

  • No change: main and other pings are UNAFFECTED by this add-on.
  • Respects telemetry preferences. If a client has disabled telemetry, no telemetry will be sent for that client.

Study-specific endings

  • This study has no study-specific endings.

Choice of telemetry API

Custom pings, specific to THIS study.

  • This add-on opens UDP and TCP sockets at browser startup and sends DNS requests for names in a zone that we control (*.dnssec-experiment-moz.net). We request seven different resource record types, re-transmitting if necessary:

    • A (with and without the DNSSEC OK bit set)
    • RRSIG
    • DNSKEY
    • SMIMEA
    • HTTPS
    • NEWONE (a non-standard record type that we created for this study; code point 66)
    • NEWTWO (another non-standard record type that we created for this study; code point 65283)
    • NEWTHREE (another non-standard record type that we created for this study; code point 67)
    • NEWFOUR (another non-standard record type that we created for this study; code point 65284)

  • We wait for the DNS responses and then encapsulate the raw bytes into a ping, excluding any IP or UDP headers. For each record type, we also record how many times we attempted to query the record type.

  • We also collect application and environment data about Firefox clients, as provided by the browser.telemetry.submitPing() API. Example environment data includes browser version, operating system, and active addons.

  • An example ping containing the DNS responses takes the following form:

{
  "id": "d7754449-8cb1-4df6-b07b-c60dab6f5d66",
  "creationDate": "2020-08-10T01:01:01.145Z",
  "application": { ... },
  "environment": { ... },
  "clientId": "c4582ba1-79fc-1f47-ae2a-671118dccd8b",
  "type": "dnssec-study-v1",
  "version": 4,
  "payload": {
    "measurementID": "e76962aa-a28f-4893-b3bf-fa2e33789e5d",
    "reason": "STUDY_MEASUREMENT_END",
    "dnsData": {
      "udpAWebExt": "127.0.0.1",
      "udpA": [1, 2, 3],
      "tcpA": [1, 2, 3],
      "udpACD": [1, 2, 3],
      "tcpACD": [1, 2, 3],
      "udpADO": [1, 2, 3],
      "tcpADO": [1, 2, 3],
      "udpADOCD": [1, 2, 3],
      "tcpADOCD": [1, 2, 3],
      "udpADO": [1, 2, 3],
      "tcpADO": [1, 2, 3],
      "udpRRSIG": [1, 2, 3],
      "tcpRRSIG": [1, 2, 3],
      "udpDNSKEY": [1, 2, 3],
      "tcpDNSKEY": [1, 2, 3],
      "udpSMIMEA": [1, 2, 3],
      "tcpSMIMEA": [1, 2, 3],
      "udpHTTPS": [1, 2, 3],
      "tcpHTTPS": [1, 2, 3],
      "udpNEWONE": [1, 2, 3],
      "tcpNEWONE": [1, 2, 3],
      "udpNEWTWO": [1, 2, 3],
      "tcpNEWTWO": [1, 2, 3],
      "udpNEWTHREE": [1, 2, 3],
      "tcpNEWTHREE": [1, 2, 3],
      "udpNEWFOUR": [1, 2, 3],
      "tcpNEWFOUR": [1, 2, 3]
    },
    "dnsAttempts": {
      "udpAWebExt": 1,
      "udpA": 1,
      "tcpA": 1,
      "udpACD": 1,
      "tcpACD": 1,
      "udpADO": 1,
      "tcpADO": 1,
      "udpADOCD": 1,
      "tcpADOCD": 1,
      "udpRRSIG": 1,
      "tcpRRSIG": 1,
      "udpDNSKEY": 1,
      "tcpDNSKEY": 1,
      "udpSMIMEA": 1,
      "tcpSMIMEA": 1,
      "udpHTTPS": 1,
      "tcpHTTPS": 1,
      "udpNEWONE": 1,
      "tcpNEWONE": 1,
      "udpNEWTWO": 1,
      "tcpNEWTWO": 1,
      "udpNEWTHREE": 1,
      "tcpNEWTHREE": 1,
      "udpNEWFOUR": 1,
      "tcpNEWFOUR": 1
    }
  }
}
  • We also send a ping at browser startup that simply indicates the beginning of the experiment for a given browser session. An example ping takes the following form:
{
  "id": "d7754449-8cb1-4df6-b07b-c60dab6f5d66",
  "creationDate": "2020-08-10T01:01:01.145Z",
  "application": { ... },
  "environment": { ... },
  "clientId": "c4582ba1-79fc-1f47-ae2a-671118dccd8b",
  "type": "dnssec-study-v1",
  "version": 4,
  "payload": {
    "measurementID": "e76962aa-a28f-4893-b3bf-fa2e33789e5d",
    "reason": "STUDY_START"
  }
}
  • Lastly, we send a ping if any error occurs, i.e. if UDP sockets fail to open, if nameservers couldn't be read from disk, or if a DNS request could not be sent. These pings take the following form:
{
  "id": "d7754449-8cb1-4df6-b07b-c60dab6f5d66",
  "creationDate": "2020-08-10T01:01:01.145Z",
  "application": { ... },
  "environment": { ... },
  "clientId": "c4582ba1-79fc-1f47-ae2a-671118dccd8b",
  "type": "dnssec-study-v1",
  "version": 4,
  "payload": {
    "measurementID": "e76962aa-a28f-4893-b3bf-fa2e33789e5d",
    "reason": ("STUDY_ERROR_UDP_MISC",
               "STUDY_ERROR_UDP_ENCODE",
               "STUDY_ERROR_UDP_PREMATURE_CLOSE",
               "STUDY_ERROR_UDP_BYTES_WRITTEN",
               "STUDY_ERROR_UDP_QUERY_TIMEOUT",
               "STUDY_ERROR_UDP_WEBEXT",
               "STUDY_ERROR_TCP_MISC",
               "STUDY_ERROR_TCP_ENCODE",
               "STUDY_ERROR_TCP_NETWORK_TIMEOUT",
               "STUDY_ERROR_TCP_NETWORK_MISC",
               "STUDY_ERROR_TCP_CONNECTION_REFUSED",
               "STUDY_ERROR_TCP_NOT_ENOUGH_BYTES",
               "STUDY_ERROR_TCP_TOO_MANY_BYTES",
               "STUDY_ERROR_TCP_QUERY_TIMEOUT",
               "STUDY_ERROR_NAMESERVERS_OS_NOT_SUPPORTED",
               "STUDY_ERROR_NAMESERVERS_NOT_FOUND",
               "STUDY_ERROR_NAMESERVERS_INVALID_ADDR",
               "STUDY_ERROR_NAMESERVERS_MISC",
               "STUDY_ERROR_NAMESERVERS_FILE",
               "STUDY_ERROR_CAPTIVE_PORTAL_FAILED",
               "STUDY_ERROR_CAPTIVE_PORTAL_API_DISABLED",
               "STUDY_ERROR_FETCH_FAILED",
               "STUDY_ERROR_FETCH_NOT_MATCHED"), // One of these values
    "errorAttempt": 1,
    "errorRRTYPE": "A"
  }
}
  • In all of the pings, measurementID is a UUID that is added to represent a particular instance of our measurements for a given client. In essence, it is a session ID, since our measurements should only run once at browser startup.

Performance optimizations affecting submitted telemetry

  • Instead of sending a separate ping for each DNS response, we wait for all of the DNS responses to return, re-transmitting lost packets if necessary. We then encapsulate the DNS responses into a single ping.
  • If we receive the correct responses for each DNS request, then the size of the ping containing the responses should be at most 4-5 KB.
  • As previously noted, we only run the measurements once per browser startup.