To: Eric Thomas <ERIC@VM.SE.LSOFT.COM>
Cc: drums@cs.utk.edu
Subject: Re: cname lookup effort 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sat, 05 Oct 1996 17:30:38 +0200."
             <199610051546.LAA26120@CS.UTK.EDU> 
Date: Sun, 06 Oct 1996 02:53:27 +1000
Message-Id: <17872.844534407@munnari.OZ.AU>
From: Robert Elz <kre@munnari.oz.au>

    Date:        Sat, 5 Oct 1996 17:30:38 +0200
    From:        Eric Thomas <ERIC@VM.SE.LSOFT.COM>
    Message-ID:  <199610051546.LAA26120@CS.UTK.EDU>


    My main objection to the current wording  in 1123 is that it leaves me me
    with only one  working solution (CNAME), which is  unsatisfactory, to the
    problem  of the  service-based hostnames  vs ISP  outsourced box  which I
    mentioned in  my last  posting.

This is a little unbelievable.  CNAME accomplishes exactly one
productive thing not able to be done other ways via the DNS.
There are zillions of unproductive things you can manage with CNAME
records (an almighty mess), but just one that is useful.  Everything
else can be done some other way.  The one useful property of a
CNAME is that allows rewriting of names - it says "this name is
an alias for that other one which is the real name everyone should
use".   It doesn't even do that particularly well, as it doesn't
work for a name wth sub-domains.   You're proposing eliminiating the
only rational purpose for keeping CNAME records in the DNS at all.

It isn't beyond all possibilities that at some stage CNAME records
might just be deprecated, eliminating all of these problems.

kre