Re: DNS and Mosaic

jallard@microsoft.com
Fri, 01 Oct 93 17:45:20

Andy> Well my first reaction is don't do it, because any Administrator
Andy> who doesn't run DNS so it caches addresses is just asking for
Andy> performance problems. We, for example, connect to the internet
Andy> through a 14.4K modem, it's pretty slow. Hostname lookups,
Andy> however, aren't one of our problems since one machine on the local
Andy> LAN caches address lookups. It's the Administrator's job to
Andy> resolve log-jams like this, at least that's my philosophy.

you're making a couple of assumptions that might not be valid for all
environments:

a) the dns services available to a user are administered by their
organization

b) the local dns services implement their own caching scheme.

in tommorow's world of dialup/isdn/cable from-the-home internet
connectivity assertion (a) fails. as for (b), many smaller organizations
run pc-based dns servers which generally do not cache, frequently
referring rather than recursing queries.

that said, i would think that it wouldn't be the end of the world if a
client could choose to postpend www hostname resolution results in their
/etc/hosts (or equivalent hosttable store) if said option was enabled.
in fact, some people might think it was nice.

a good place to ask this question might be comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc,
where some of the less powerful hostname resolution schemes are better
understood.

_______________________________________________________________
J. Allard jallard@microsoft.com
Program Manager of TCP/IP Technologies work: (206)882-8080
Microsoft Corporation home: (206)860-8862