Combining DNS and NATD

[Jonathan de Boyne Pollard]

BM> SRV records offer that possibility, but almost nothing uses them.

... where "almost nothing" is a measure of user visibility, or of 
relative service protocol bandwidth consumption, rather than of 
application types.  The applications that end-users mostly "see", web 
browsers, don't use "SRV" lookups, much to the shame and embarrassment 
of their authors.  But many of the applications in the less end-user 
visible parts of systems *do*.  Some NICNAME clients use "SRV" lookups, 
and a surprisingly large number of registries now publish the locations 
of their NICNAME servers via "SRV" resource records.  LDAP clients use 
"SRV" lookups.  (As end-user popularity is our metric, note that the 
LDAP clients in the most popular desktop PC operating system use "SRV" 
lookups.)  At least one LDAP server, the OpenLDAP "root" server, uses 
"SRV" lookups, too.  Kerberos clients use "SRV" lookups.  At least two 
SMTP Relay clients, mine and exim, are now fully capable of using "SRV" 
lookups.  At least one FTP client, LFTP, uses "SRV" lookups.

Internet is not the World Wide Web, and not all service clients are web 
browsers.  Don't let the lamentable situation with web browsers colour 
your perceptions of overall "SRV" lookup use.