Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!bcm!watson!sob
From: sob@watson.bcm.tmc.edu (Stan Barber)
Newsgroups: news.sysadmin
Subject: Re: CALL FOR VOTE, COMP.INTERNET.ADDR AND COMP.INTERNET
Message-ID: <1475@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu>
Date: 3 Apr 89 13:59:32 GMT
References: <2078@pikes.Colorado.EDU> <15805@oberon.USC.EDU> <1466@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu> <209@jetson.UPMA.MD.US>
Sender: usenet@bcm.tmc.edu
Reply-To: sob@watson.bcm.tmc.edu (Stan Barber)
Organization: Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX
Lines: 26

In article <209@jetson.UPMA.MD.US> john@jetson.UPMA.MD.US (John Owens) writes:
>
>Sorry, but nameservers have no need to be listed in HOSTS.TXT.  The
>root nameservers will spit out information records with the nameserver
>addresses when responding to an NS query.  A nameserver-based system
>can get by without ever looking at HOSTS.TXT.
>
>Essentially, HOSTS.TXT contains hosts that are there by inertia and
>hosts that people on (mostly) MILNET sites with old software would
>raise a fuss about if they could no longer reach....  [1/2 :-)]

I never said that nameservers needed to be listed for name servers to find
them. If that was implied, it was bad writing on my part. What I meant to
say was that the NIC only allows "important" hosts like nameservers to be
listed in HOSTS.TXT. I hope I was clear in expressing that.

Hosts on MILNET are not the only ones running old software unfortunately.
Some sites still use 4.1BSD-style networking. :-)

Imagine what will happen when sri-nic.arpa stops being a valid name or
alias for the NIC computer!


Stan           internet: sob@bcm.tmc.edu         Baylor College of Medicine
Olan           uucp: {rice,killer,hoptoad}!academ!sob
Barber         Opinions expressed are only mine.