[22] in resnet
Name service
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (pshuang@Athena.MIT.EDU)
Wed May 19 09:12:33 1993
From: pshuang@Athena.MIT.EDU
Date: Wed, 19 May 93 09:12:14 -0400
To: dthumim@Athena.MIT.EDU
Cc: resnet@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: dthumim@Athena.MIT.EDU's message of Wed, 19 May 93 01:45:49 EDT <9305190545.AA10155@marinara>
> But what about for people who want to run network services (servers
> of some kind)? In order to be able to run such a service, it is
> important that a system have a name that does not change every time
> the computer's owner moves across the hall.
Someone who starts to run a business out of their dorm rooms would want
to have the same phone number follow them around even if they move from
dorm to dorm, yet Telecom doesn't support transferring your phone number
with you, nor do I expect that there is much of a demand for such a thing.
Whether we really want to encourage students to start setting up their
own nettrek or pornographic files FTP servers is perhaps in question,
although I'm sure many students would be interested in offering more
"worthwhile" services (am I making a moral judgment? yes, I'm not in a
position of power so I get to freely express my opinions....)
In addition to the canonical names which would be tied intimately to the
room of the network port (by construction from the building name and
room number), aliases/cnames could be established. The former would make
overall management easier, the latter would permit name stability.
However, these "vanity names" would still require upkeep time at the end
of each term when a flurry of update requests would come in -- and labor
overhead would likely amount to much more than a dollar per transaction.
Noting that current ILG machines do have names is no argument at all,
the current crop of such machines aren't going anywhere and hence aren't
subject to this management problem.
There are a number of non-centralized solutions. For example, using chfn
one could stuff the server name into your finger information on
ATHENA.MIT.EDU. Or you could put the info into your .project or .plan
file and encourage people to use altered finger services such as that on
electric-monk.mit.edu which allows off-site queries to see those two
dotfiles. The problem with either solution is that it clearly ties that
service to a particular user. However, I'd suspect that very few new
services which will be offered because of resnet's new opportunities
will outlast the person who initially offers it, since that person will
eventually take their computer with them when they leave, unless someone
then volunteers to transfer the service onto their machine.
Just some rambling early morning thoughts....
---
Yours in Leadership, Friendship, and Service,
Ping Huang (INTERNET: pshuang@athena.mit.edu), probably speaking for himself
