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* On 2003.09.02, in <20030902162044.GJ23320@xxxx.xxxxxxxx.xxx>, * "David Champion" <dgc@xxxxxxxx.xxx> wrote: > * On 2003.09.02, in <Pine.LNX.4.55.0309021638100.6478@xxx.xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.xxx>, > * "Mark Fowler" <www@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.xxx> wrote: > > I hate software that doesn't map http://theirdomainname.com to > > http://www.theirdomainname.com. > > But that's asinine. We don't map uchicago.edu to smtp.uchicago.edu, or > to finger.uchicago.edu, or to sunrpc.uchicago.edu, either. Because it's > not. And it's not software's fault, it's people's achievement. > > In a justifiably bad mood, but (unfortunately) not because of software, Oh, all right. I'll take a shot at software, in the spirit of this post. Mapping domain.name to www.domain.name is asinine; I stand by that. But I'll tell you what I hate. I hate DNS. DNS is busted. DNS had a good idea in the MX record: a short and simple way to say "whenever you want this name for SMTP, use this other name instead." A fine concept, a noble goal, and most useful. I can make mail for domain.name go to smtp.domain.name with no trouble. And mail for anywhere else. What a useful paradigm! I need this for my http and finger services, too, as it happens. It should be little surprise, and I imagine a lot of people do. We've mapped finger at domain.name to finger at another box for ages -- since before there was a web, and that coexists fine with mail. Adding a mapping for http might be nice -- it's certainly user-friendly, and good in principle. But it's impossible to map both finger and http jointly with smtp. Why? Because DNS is busted. What DNS should do is to provide a uniform, service-neutral RR mapping a service (or port, if you'd rather) to a host. When my web browser wants to look up http://domain.name, it looks up the service RR instead, and perhaps finds the http mapping saying it should refer to www.domain.name instead. Finger could easily do the same. It could even be built into library routines for constructing sockaddr_in structures, if we wanted to make things easier for the coder. But DNS doesn't do this; it's short-sighted. It would rather push this burden to the application protocol, where it doesn't belong. DNS is busted. -- -D. dgc@xxxxxxxx.xxx University of Chicago > NSIT > VDN > ENSS > ENSA > You are here . . . . . . . always line up dots
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