sortlist Questions

[Martin McCormick]

	We want clients on our remote campuses to be able to locally
download software which we have purchased.  Last year, I asked about
using sortlist so that a person querying from Campus A would get a
server's address on Network A, first.  I was told by someone on this
list that that is not a good strategy because a query might come from
the wrong place, causing a client to get the wrong site server first.
I appear to have lost the actual message explaining why this is a bad
idea, but I understand why it is.

	Could name-based hosting be used by web servers to determine
where a customer is so that he or she will get a link that resolves to
a server which is on their local network?

	As I understand it, bind is not a good place to try to
determine which IP address a customer needs based upon the query
address.  The web site in question has to be on a public network and
should determine whether a customer is calling in from one of our
networks in which case he gets a link to a local server, or he is
calling in from a network that isn't ours and he gets the main site
server that is best able to handle the load.

	I basically need arguments to share as to why DNS isn't built
to make this sort of address selection or suggestions as to how other
sites do this sort of thing.

	Many thanks.

Martin McCormick WB5AGZ  Stillwater, OK 
OSU Information Technology Division Network Operations Group