Subject: Re: Guidance needed on well known ports

From: [email-masked] (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2006 08:57:05 -0500 (EST)

> From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>

    > I have learned not to tell people (especially Keith and Noel)

Hey, I'm nowhere near as hypergolic on this as Keith is... :-)

    > that DNS is the right answer to all questions,

Well, it works fine for what it was designed to do. Problem is, people get
into this "hammer-nail" mode, and they have a problem to solve, and not enough
(protocol) tools to do it with... (ARP used to suffer the same problem.)

    > it is significantly difficult having most of the machines on the net
    > impossible to locate from most of the other machines on the net.

That's more because of NAT, than anything else. Even if you had the IP
address, in most cases it wouldn't do you any good. (But now we are drifting
off-topic, let's not turn this into the usual NAT rant - or Keith will
*really* get going! :-)

	Noel

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From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2006 10:19:57 -0500

> Hey, I'm nowhere near as hypergolic on this as Keith is... :-)

"hypergolic"... great word! (even if a tad unflattering...)

> (protocol) tools to do it with... (ARP used to suffer the same problem.)

very much agree.  the other problem with DNS is that the environment
has changed a lot since DNS was designed.  DNS worked fine in the days
when hosts were expensive, relatively few in number, in fixed
locations, and centrally maintained by dedicated staff.  these days when
hosts are numerous and cheap, highly mobile, and barely maintained at
all, DNS has a large potential to get out of sync with reality.
another factor is two-faced DNS or the tendency to use other lookup
services on local networks.  yet another factor is disconnected
networks.

in order to try to deal with all of these things we have numerous hacks
on top of DNS that don't really work well together, and as a result, we
don't have a common set of assumptions about what DNS means, what it's
good for and what it's not, how it interfaces with mobility,
autoconfiguration, etc. 

we really need a naming architecture that encompasses a modern view of
the Internet. 

> That's more because of NAT, than anything else. 

I was going to say that, but you beat me to it.  thanks.

Keith