Re: server redirects by client domain

Brian Behlendorf (brian@organic.com)
Wed, 20 Dec 1995 11:26:18 -0800 (PST)

On Wed, 20 Dec 1995, Darren New wrote:
> > I'm going to float this idea because I thought of it, not necessarily
> > because I have thought it through . . . wouldn't this be the kind of
> > thing it would be nice if DNS could do for you?
>
> I think it would be nice if the DNS has a domain that maps IP addresses
> to lat/long pairs. Then you could see who is close, what taxes you need
> where, and so on. I would think you'd want it similar to the
> in-addr.arpa domain. --Darren

Uh, yeah, as if geographic topology had anything to do with network
topology... :)

DNS is insufficient, by itself, because many sites won't want to dedicate
an IP address to a particular service. http://www.apache.org/'s apache
documentation is at its root level, but bond.edu.au's is way under
"/External/Misc/apache/". So, even if DNS could say "www.apache.org
can be accessed as these 10 machines: ...." and the client chose one
based on "ping" latency, there's still no information about the path.
The current set of URN schemes seem much more germaine to the task.

I've found some interesting things out in setting up the www.apache.org
mirrors - there are separate mirrors in the UK, Poland, Czech Republic,
and Italy because their bandwidth to each other is even less than their
bandwidth to the United States, or so they claim. Eek. :)

Brian

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