Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!ucsd!orion.cf.uci.edu!oberon!skat.usc.edu!blarson
From: blarson@skat.usc.edu (Bob Larson)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail
Subject: Re: Name server service for UUCP sites: an idea
Message-ID: <14965@oberon.USC.EDU>
Date: 27 Jan 89 07:46:05 GMT
References: <13364@ncoast.ORG>
Sender: news@oberon.USC.EDU
Reply-To: blarson@skat.usc.edu (Bob Larson)
Organization: USC AIS, Los Angeles
Lines: 23

In article <13364@ncoast.ORG> allbery@ncoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery) writes:
>I recently had the thought that if the lists of systems known to Internet
>nameservers (and the paths, at least to the forwarders) was posted
>occasionally, UUCP sites could then collect the information and add it to
>the maps -- and pathalias could then properly deal with the Internet.
>(Think of it as a more advanced version of "arpatxt".)

The main problem with this idea is the problems that the Internet
domain name servers were designed to fix reappear.  A database of this
size, with frequent changes being done from many locations, is to hard
to keep up to date.  Each entry now has its own exparation time, this
allows anticipated changes to happen without any misuse of outdated
information.

There are also the minor problems of how to create and distribute the
database.  (The sri-nic hosts.txt file has over 6000 hosts listed, and
USC has about 30 times as many hosts as are listed there!)

-- 
Bob Larson	Arpa: Blarson@Ecla.Usc.Edu	blarson@skat.usc.edu
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