[12588] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
too-flat domains => transparent fanout?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (bukys@cs.rochester.edu)
Mon May 23 13:33:12 1994
To: com-priv@psi.com
Cc: bukys@cs.rochester.edu
Date: Mon, 23 May 94 09:49:20 -0400
From: bukys@cs.rochester.edu
It appears to me that most of the schemes being bantered about
(random numbers, phone numbers, etc) are a step backward, so much
so that they start to make X.400 look like a step forward.
I'm particularly distressed to see luminaries such as Postel and
Crocker so demoralized about the current system that they are ready
to go to something like this. It must be that they are a lot closer
to the operational chaos that is burdening .com and perhaps .in-addr.arpa.
But I fail to see why these operational problems can't be fixed in
a way that doesn't "show through". Sure, a very flat and wide fan-out
in the namespace can cause operational problems. On the other hand,
it's still the intuitive way to lay out certain spaces. So why not
fan out, but transparently? Without extreme amounts of work, the .com
servers could delegate work based on the first few letters, and do
it in a way that's transparent to the clients. There's no need to
create an apple.a.com, bbn.b.com, cray.c.com, which is just making
one of the implementation details show through too much to the clients.
In fact, the random-number/phone-number discussion kind of rolled around
to this while discussing how to break up long strings of digits, and
Barry Shein observed that the domain servers themselves could re-group
the digits as necessary. Well, if the domain server is willing to do
that, leave the digits out, and have transparent lexical delegation
going on in the existing too-flat-looking namespace.
Note that there is lots of precedent for making the servers work a little
harder while maintaining a simple model for clients. Exterior vs interior
routing protocols, some of the IPng proposals, etc.
Liudvikas Bukys
University of Rochester
Computer Science Department
734 Computer Studies Building
Rochester, NY 14627-0226
tel# 716-275-7747
fax# 716-461-2018
<bukys@cs.rochester.edu>
