Re: [homenet] Unicast DNS within the Homenet?

[Andrew Sullivan <[e-mail]>]

On Mon, Sep 10, 2012 at 01:58:46PM +0100, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
> The right question is whether DNS is the appropriate solution for converting
> local devices names to addresses, or whether there is some other naming service that
> should be the standard. Since DNS is the IETF standard for converting names
> to addresses, there would need to be a pretty strong case for anything else.

As Ray says, DNS is by no means the only IETF standard for this.
There's RFC 4795, for instance.  

ALso, draft-cheshire-dnsext-multicastdns-15 has been in the RFC Editor
queue for 265 days.  There is an IPR disclosure, but it's your basic
mutually-assured-patentwar-clause permissive license.  

Nevertheless, some people _do_ use real DNS -- even split-brain DNS --
in homenet-type networks.  Certainly, the many devices that include
dnsmasq (and yes, I am perfectly aware of the problems and limitations
attendant on such deployments) are using DNS inside the network some
of the time.  I'd be pretty uncomfortable deciding that all those
deployed networks are going to need reconfiguration to conform with
whatever this WG comes up with.

In addition, it seems to me that there are going to be split-brain
overloaded-name conditions that are more easily solved with DNS than
with anything else.  (Certainly, the desire expressed several times in
Vancouver for a single identifier simply to work no matter what
network one is in suggests that things like llmnr and mdns are not
going to be winners here.)

Best,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
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