I think we're in violent agreement. My old arguments against explicit paths are starting to hold true for what we are currently calling "addresses". As I said in my last note, mapping of real-world objects to funny-world objects (that is, person/place names to host/network names) is a directory services problem and cannot be solved with DNS or anything like DNS. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Here I borth agree and disagree. It is fair to say that DNS is not an appropriate solution for the problems, however I disagree that something
On Thu, 27 Jul 1995, Paul A Vixie wrote: like DNS is also inappropriate. What DNS does is provide an arbitrary mapping between an individual and something related to that individual, namely a machine name at the place they do most of their net access. If we simply broaden things so that the arbitrary mapping can be chosen by the individual and the mapping can be portable, then I believe the problem is solved. By inserting another directory layer similar to DNS but with different top-level domains we can broaden the namespace as much as is needed. Suitable modifications could be made to tools like sendmail to query the directory layer either before or after querying DNS. The directory layer would then issue a DNS name for further lookup. Therefore, VIXIE.BIND.HACKER.ROLE would resolve to VIXIE.SF.CA.US today and if you move to Australia you need only change the directory entry to map to VIXIE.COM.AU or whatever. Since we have 36 symbols to use for each level of naming, we should attempt to allow as many combinations as possible especially at the top levels. The only reason I can see for using a different mapping layer is that the DNS system has other jobs to do and we should not overburden it with huge databases that do not help it carry out its primary function. Michael Dillon Voice: +1-604-546-8022 Memra Software Inc. Fax: +1-604-542-4130 http://www.memra.com E-mail: michael@memra.com