Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!ATHENA.MIT.EDU!mar
From: mar@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Domain Name Screaming
Message-ID: <8907051533.AA19984@TOTO.MIT.EDU>
Date: 5 Jul 89 15:33:36 GMT
References: <3833@phri.UUCP>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 21


   Date: 4 Jul 89 13:42:16 GMT
   From: phri!roy@rutgers.edu  (Roy Smith)

	   Besides, for all it's grossness (and there is plenty) YP still
   provides a reasonably convenient way to share files with local additions.
   For example, all our suns share /etc/printcap using YP.  Every machine that
   has direct control of a printer has a local /etc/printcap for that printer.
   The printcap parsing routines were written to read the local file first and
   only go to YP if the name can't be resolved there.  Show me a way to do
   that that's easier than YP.

But we do the exact same thing here at Athena using our Hesiod name
service.  Hesiod is a set of simple library routines layered over BIND
that give us the ability to lookup account information, access groups,
filesystems, printers, etc.  We have the flexibility of the DNS, and
only one kind of database to maintain for hosts and other information.
We find that it's faster to look up something though Hesiod than
scanning a local text file, even if it's not already in the local
named cache.
					-Mark Rosenstein