Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!yale!eagle!flinton
From: flinton@eagle.wesleyan.edu
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc
Subject: Re: By address nameservers (was Re: Internet and Bitnet Directories?)
Message-ID: <4067@eagle.wesleyan.edu>
Date: 27 Nov 89 12:18:59 GMT
References: <5266@yunexus.UUCP> <2172@prune.bbn.com> <5299@yunexus.UUCP> <6920@portia.Stanford.EDU> <1989Nov22.184823.28878@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca> <1989Nov23.231811.6598@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca>
Lines: 18

In article <1989Nov23.231811.6598@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca>, 
dennis@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (Dennis Ferguson) writes:
> 
> ...  Your average user on the
> machine whose IP network address is 128.100.63.2 can get by without ever
> seeing, and certainly never typing 128.100.63.2.  Humans refer to hosts
> by name, not by irrelevant, hard-to-remember and likely-to-change things
> like network addresses.
>   
Well, yes, in the best of all possible worlds.  In the present world, up
until this past fall, if I wanted to TELNET (or FTP) to my inria account, 
TELNET inria.inria.fr would splutter an error message (host unknown, or the
like) but TELNET 128.93.xx.yy (yup, hard to remember!) would work.  Now that
our site tables are up to date, I can afford to forget that IP address --
except when our site tables break, as they do on occasion -- (sigh!).

Irrelevant, hard to remember?  Yes.  But occasionally indispensible, as well.