Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!samsung!munnari.oz.au!mel.dit.csiro.au!smart From: smart@mel.dit.csiro.au (Robert Smart) Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip.domains Subject: Re: Domain system records for X.25 and ISDN Message-ID: <1990Aug8.044449.10040@mel.dit.csiro.au> Date: 8 Aug 90 04:44:49 GMT References: <9007311326.AA08163@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> Distribution: inet Organization: CSIRO DIT (Melb.) Lines: 47 I think the general idea of the proposed draft RFC is excellent. I would like to quibble at some details. 1) The RT records are to be used by the network layer. Like all network activity this should work without reference to domain names. It seems more correct to make this an extension of the in-addr.arpa domain 17.128.in-addr.arpa. IN RT 10 sh.prime.com. is a route to a whole class B network (128.17). Alternatively 17.18.19.20.in-addr.arpa. IN RT 30 relay.prime.com. is a route to a specific host. The names on the right here are used to choose X25 or ISDN or other routes -- their IN A records are irrelevant in this context. 2) The X25 and ISDN types should be network types parallel to IN not parts of the IN network info. E.g. Relay.prime.com. X25 A 311061700956 ISDN A 150887929603217 003 Records of the form 31106700956.x25-addr.arpa. IN X25 x.y.edu should mean that host x.y.edu will accept X25-over-IP calls for X.25 address 31106700956 using some to-be-defined protocol for running X.25 over IP. I would point out that CISCO have such a protocol and might release it (my guess: they would release it if there was a threat of some other protocol becoming a standard). Similarly for IN ISDN. Yes ISDN over IP could be used to provide telephone/fax/whatever connectivity to workstations with IP connectivity. It may not be as clearly desirable as IP over ISDN but it is possible and whatever the theoretical difficulties I suspect it would work fine in practice in many situations. 3) It is possible to imagine access to X25 and ISDN A records from boxes which don't run IP. So it would be nice to define a protocol for accessing the DNS over raw X.25 and raw ISDN networks. Since the DNS can be accessed by UDP and TCP this shouldn't be hard. Bob Smart