Re: Statements against new.net?
On Tue, 13 March 2001, "Steven M. Bellovin" wrote:
Put simply, deploying multiple public DNS roots would raise a very strong possibility that users of different ISPs who click on the same link on a web page could end up at different destinations, against the will of the web page designers.
Its not really the "will of the web page designers." If this becomes popular, I suspect most web page designers will start using dotted-quad addresses inside their HTML URLs on their web pages. So clicking on a link on a web page will go to were the web page designer directs you. Except for NAT strangeness, IP Address are mostly globally unique. The issue is really one of user expectations. Some class of users have developed the expectation if they type some words resembling what they are looking for in the "address" prompt of their web browser, they will get taken to someplace they want. Web browser companies (e.g. Netscape, Microsoft) have reinforced this perception by automagically transforming the user's input into something else. Type "white house" into Internet Explorer 5.5's address prompt, and watch what happens. Netscape's browser has transformed any single word "XXXXXX" into http://www.XXXXXXX.com/ for a while.
On Tue, 13 Mar 2001 11:13:18 PST, Sean Donelan said:
Its not really the "will of the web page designers." If this becomes popular, I suspect most web page designers will start using dotted-quad addresses inside their HTML URLs on their web pages. So clicking on a
Except of course you can't bookmark the damned things, because the bookmark breaks if the website recables. One machine in my office has had the same hostname for 8 years now, but at least 3 MAC addresses due to upgrades and either 3 or 4 IP addresses. Hostnames exist for a reason. (For bonus points - how long after the first IMP install did a host change its NCP network address because of an IMP port change? ;) I have to ask if any of these people who advocate the new.net approach have been in the business long enough to have diagnosed problems caused by "I've got the Sep 1 hosts.txt, but you've go the July 15 and they've got the Sep 22" version. I *thought* we learned our lesson. Apparently not. -- Valdis Kletnieks Operating Systems Analyst Virginia Tech
On Tue, 13 March 2001, "Steven M. Bellovin" wrote:
Put simply, deploying multiple public DNS roots would raise a very strong possibility that users of different ISPs who click on the same link on a web page could end up at different destinations, against the will of the web page designers.
Its not really the "will of the web page designers." If this becomes popular, I suspect most web page designers will start using dotted-quad addresses inside their HTML URLs on their web pages. So clicking on a link on a web page will go to were the web page designer directs you. Except for NAT strangeness, IP Address are mostly globally unique.
Fine. Then we have a technical issue associated with "all the links break when a web server is moved to a different IP address because whoever was hosting it had to renumber", and it's companion "I can fix the links because there's no way to know what the new IP address is". Since the reason renumbering is a reality are technical -- or, are at least presented that way -- the need for a single DNS root remains technical. Dotted-quads aren't a viable technical solution on the Internet as it exists today, anyway, because there's too many servers that have one IP address and lots of virtual hosts.
The issue is really one of user expectations. Some class of users have developed the expectation if they type some words resembling what they are looking for in the "address" prompt of their web browser, they will get taken to someplace they want.
That is indeed a political issue, but it's separate from DNS. There is a technical need to map a name that is relatively constant to an IP address which is relatively transient. The requirement for DNS names to have some meaning to the user is political, and that could certainly be eliminated, but 2826 doesn't address that issue. It only addresses the need for "one true DNS". We could certainly (and probably should, although it's unlikely to happen) make DNS names non-meaningful and then have a higher level of search functionality to provide lookups based on meaningful names, and there could certainly be multiple such search providers. -- Brett
participants (3)
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Brett Frankenberger -
Sean Donelan -
Valdis.Kletnieks＠vt.edu