Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!ucsd!ucbvax!verw.switch.ch!Eppenberger
From: Eppenberger@verw.switch.ch ("Urs Eppenberger")
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip.domains
Subject: Proposal for use of DNS to store RFC 987, etc mappings
Message-ID: <2511:Eppenberger@verw.switch.ch>
Date: 20 Jul 90 08:06:00 GMT
References: <9007161446.AA08340@janeb.cs.wisc.edu>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Distribution: inet
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 33

Dear Rob,

It was important to start some thoughts on how the coordination problem
for the RFC987 tables could be solved. Your porposal is a very valid input
to that discussion, thanks a lot. (I'm the MHS coordinator for the Swiss
X.400 academic network SWITCHmail, which includes several RFC987 gateways
and I know personally the problems of keeping the tables up to date :-| .)

Just let me do two comments:

a) RARE WG1 does not coordinate the RFC987 tables. Actually it is done by
   the RARE MHS project team at Sintef in Norway. In the near future this
   job will be handed over to COSINE S2.1 or S2.2.
   I suggest therefore to delete the corresponding parts in your proposal
   und replace it with a 'neutral' term, i.e. RFC987 gateway table
   coordination group, ...
   Perhaps your proposal will getthe status of a standard and then it is
   important not to fix who will collect the tables.
b) As we actually suffer from recource intensive gatewaying software
   (in terms of CPU power and maintenance) I'm very concerned about how
   performant an implementation following your proposal will be.
   I suggest you to add a small chapter which studies the performance
   issue.
   (The WG1 distribution list contains 60 addresses from ca 40 different
    domains which forces the gateway to collect 60 MX records from 40
    different name servers. How long will it need to translate the
    message? A table driven mechanism will surely be faster.)
    (But clever implementation of your proposal could easily be faster
     than the software we use actually :-)  :-(   .)

Kind regards,

Urs.