cname quick question

[Jim Reid]

>>>>> "Tal" == Tal Dayan <tal at zapta.com> writes:

    Tal> Hi Cricket.

    Tal> If I understand it correctly, the change itself is
    Tal> technically feasible and the standards can be modified, but
    Tal> the main trick is to find a modification that will be
    Tal> interoperability with the existing DNS servers (whether BIND
    Tal> or others).

Indeed. But Cricket was being nice by just explaining what needed to be
done. Presumably he hoped you'd realise the enormity of what you were
advocating. I don't think you have any idea of the amount of work your
proposal would entail assuming you could convince anyone to take it
seriously. Even getting a simple non-controversial protocol change
through IETF and adopted as a standard is non-trivial. Then there's
the question of implementation and deployment. [How many sites still
run BIND4 years after it was declared dead?] And not breaking anything
in the tens of millions of hosts and applications with working DNS
software that are on the net right now. You probably have a better
chance of success at meeting Elvis.

    Tal> So here is a challenge for you and the other DNS gurus on
    Tal> this list. Can you come with a creative idea how to modify
    Tal> BIND (and the standards) such that new servers will allow a
    Tal> CNAME for domain names without breaking interoperability with
    Tal> existing servers.

I'm going to be brutally blunt. This is like hoping someone would
teach an elephant to ballet-dance. It theoretically could be done, but
what's the point? What practical purpose does it serve in the real
world? Why should anyone care?

IIUC, your request for changing RFC1034 - which has been a cornerstone
of the DNS since it was written in 1987 - was for the flimsiest of
reasons. You wanted to have a CNAME for your domain name which points
at the host providing your web server. There are other ways of
achieving the same end result in the DNS which do not involve having a
CNAME. These have been explained many times in this list. Consult the
archives. [Hint: you can have A records for your domain name.] If this
is your only motivation for changing the CNAME and other data rule, I
suggest you don't waste any more time on the idea and do what the rest
of the world does when they want a URL like http://somedomain.com to
end up directing some browser to the web server for somedomain.com.

There's no need to turn the world upside down for something so
trivial. RFC1034 is not broken. It does not need fixing. If it did, it
would have been superseded long before now. The fact that it hasn't
should tell you something.