Re: US Domain -- County Delegations
It appears to me that we are making some rather weird assumptions here, based on history in other environments (like current domain names, phone numbers, USMail addresses, and so). It is not so clear to me that there will always be a one-to-one mapping between the destination one wants to reach, and some name like vixie.sf.ca.us. Eventually such strict bindings will hurt us even more than they do today. What do you really want? Well, I want to email Joe Smith? No way, there are too many of those, give me more information? So, eventually may be we have to deal with more levels of indirection and some data base support that allows us to zoom in, and, like it or not, perhaps introduce some margin of error ("sorry, wrong number, find another Vixie"). I think in our discussions we have ways too much a historical Internet perspective with strict bindings in mind, and names and addresses that are supposed to last for lfetimes. This will not work. Ther are too many people, too many companies, too many mapping strategies out there. Whether I email to "Vixie, the bind dude," or "Vixie, the networking person living in Northern California," may be there should be algorithms and facilities in place that map those to the same person. Perhaps even in ways the information (such as email) follows him, rather than him having to chase after his email (e.g., remap his "current" location when/after he moves). What names or addresses things eventually map to should be fairly irrelevant in terms of perceived complexity, as you'd alias Joe Smith@whereever to some short version in your personal alias/nickname file anyway. Or is that just mapping information for a data base supported translation server?
What names or addresses things eventually map to should be fairly irrelevant in terms of perceived complexity, as you'd alias Joe Smith@whereever to some short version in your personal alias/nickname file anyway.
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. We've been getting away with using DNS because our total number of objects has been very small (70,000 .COM domains ain't nothin' in the real world.)
Or is that just mapping information for a data base supported translation server?
That's how X.500 planned to do it. I'm pretty sure the IETF has stuff going on in the directory services arena, perhaps someone on that WG could comment.
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
participants (3)
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Hans-Werner Braun -
Michael Dillon -
Paul A Vixie