From: Martin Hamilton <M.T.Hamilton@lut.ac.uk>
Message-Id: <199402241658.QAA09945@lust.mrrl.lut.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: URN to URC scenario
To: dupuy@smarts.com (Alexander Dupuy)
Date: Thu, 24 Feb 1994 16:58:10 +0000 (GMT)
In-Reply-To: <9402240247.AA28196@brainy.smarts.com> from "Alexander Dupuy" at Feb 23, 94 09:47:59 pm
Alex said:
$ As for CNAMEs being easier to support in DNS than TXT records, Martin is wrong
$ when he says that "it's just a matter of adding one line to the domain" in
$ either case; CNAMEs are actually more difficult, because they apply to ALL
$ record types, not just address lookups; it's illegal to have both a CNAME and
$ other records for a domain name. On the other hand, there's no problem adding
$ a TXT record for a domain name, even if there are already other records for
$ the name.
Pedant! :-)
$ I actually suspect that if DNS administrators are really as inept or unhelpful
$ as everyone seems to think that they are, that having a single URN.INT domain
$ is probably a worse idea than using existing domains for registering URNs.
$ Successfully configuring a new delegated subdomain is a lot more complicated
$ than adding a TXT record, and if the TXT (or CNAME) records for URN->URC
$ servers are all in one URN.INT zone because nobody can get their DNS
$ administrators to set up a new DNS zone, the domain servers for URN.INT will
$ be pretty overworked in five or ten years.
If there is to be a urn domain, I don't think we want it to have the
same number of subdomains as .com! Other than splitting things up by
organizational and/or geographical info, I don't see an easy way of
doing this. On the other hand, this approach would make it possible
to "manage" the URN namespace, and take care of dangling URNs (yech!)
Having said all this, I suspect there are some situations where a URN
domain would come in handy. Registering IS[BS]Ns, RFCs, and Internet
Drafts, for example?! :-)
Cheers,
Martin