Re: [tae] The internet architecture

Thomas Narten wrote:
> Keith Moore <moore@network-heretics.com> writes:
> 
>> So it's not a question of whether DNS is less reliable than IP (it is),
>> or even whether the reliability of DNS + IP is less than that of IP
>> alone (it is).  It's a question of whether increasing reliance on DNS by
>> trying to get apps and other things to use DNS names exclusively, makes
>> those apps and other things less reliable.
> 
> No. Your argument seems to be "because relying even more on DNS than
> we do today makes things more brittle, BAD, BAD BAD, we cannot go
> there."

My argument is that if you really want that sort of approach to work you
need to concentrate on making DNS more reliable and better suited to
this kind of approach, and on getting people to think of DNS differently
than they do now - rather than just talking in terms of changing the
API, which is the easy part.

> The more relevant engineering question is whether the benefits of such
> an approach outweigh the downsides. Sure there are downsides. But
> there are also real potential benefits. 

Mumble.  Years ago, I worked out details of how to build a very scalable
distributed system (called SNIPE) using a DNS-like service (but a lot
more flexible in several ways) to name endpoints and associate the names
with metadata about those endpoints, including their locations.  So I
don't need to be convinced that there are potential benefits.  But that
exercise also gave me an appreciation for the difficulties involved.
And for that exercise I allowed myself the luxury of defining my own
naming service rather than constraining myself to use DNS.  It would
have been much more difficult, though perhaps not impossible, to make
that kind of system work with DNS.

> But the only way to answer such questions in a
> productive manner is to look pretty closely at a complete
> architecture/solution together with experience from real
> implementation/usage.

You certainly need a more complete architecture before you can evaluate
it at all.

Keith
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