[MLB-WIRELESS] DNS and Locfinder

[evilbunny]

Hello Donovan,

>> ftp://ftp.cs.pdx.edu/pub/mobile/urld/ABOUT.txt
>> ftp://ftp.cs.pdx.edu/pub/mobile/urld/urldv2.tar.gz
>> ftp://ftp.cs.pdx.edu/pub/mobile/urld/urldv2.zip

DB> I had a look at this and I can't really see how useful it is... It looks
DB> more like an webserver advertisement service than a naming service.

No, it advertises URLs, which can be web, ftp, irc, anything... and
you can setup nodes to rebroadcast sites, then it dumps the URLs to a
html page you then view in your browser, or the AP could have a
default splash page with a link to the URL page...

DB> The big problem with global DNS is you probably need global IP's to match...
DB> does melbwireless have class C's to dish out?

No, even public DNS zones can report non public IPs, to DNS it's all
the same thing... routing on the other hand is a different matter, and
beyond the scope of this discussion...

Old trick on IRC was making your reverse DNS to lookup to 127.0.0.1, I
was even abused once for "how the hell did my harddrive end up on your
webserver" when in actual fact he was looking at his own webserver :)

DB> I think it makes sense to use non-global DNS for non-global IP's. It is not
DB> hard to configure things so that they work.

You end up with problems with people not being able to find real world
sites, or not being able to find internal sites, DNS wasn't designed
to be able to handle this, and can't in most cases subsequently...

DB> multi-home sites will need two IP's (wired, and wireless), with the wired
DB> having a GLOBAL DNS name, and the wireless having a non-global name. They
DB> need to configure their system so that it will use upstream global DNS
DB> servers for global names, and upstream wireless DNS servers for wireless
DB> names. The easiest way to do this is run a caching nameserver that can be
DB> configured to use the appropriate upstream DNS server.

Yes they will, but they don't have to, and more to the point not
everyone can, those running windows only systems won't be able to, or 
won't know how to easily, the whole point is being able to allow
anyone to connect easily without making any major changes to the
operating system they run...

Also what happens if you have network segregation with parts of it
split across a city, do you run 100 name servers and try to update
them all, all the time to make up for this, or do you just rely on
external ones to report name entries? I know which has less
administrative overheads... 

DB> long DNS names are OK, provided they are easy to remember. A short cryptic
DB> DNS name is worse than a long obvious one.

I'm not talking short cryptic ones, but it's pointless having long
ones you need to look up each time, or bookmark, as it's counter
productive and you end up building a directory service to keep track
of everything in any case...

unit5.xyz_st.suburb.city.state.blah.blah.blah.tld.org

is what I'm talking about... even if the example was a little extreme
;)

-- 
Best regards,
 evilbunny                            mailto:evilbunny at sydneywireless.com

http://www.cacert.org - Free Security Certificates
http://www.nodedb.com - Think globally, network locally
http://www.sydneywireless.com - Telecommunications Freedom
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: smime.p7s
Type: application/pkcs7-signature
Size: 1966 bytes
Desc: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
URL: <http://lists.wireless.org.au/pipermail/melbwireless/attachments/20021129/4b1b06d2/attachment.p7s>