Date: Fri, 02 Jun 2000 22:41:27 -0700 From: Doug Barton <DougB@gorean.org> To: Chris Fedde <chris@fedde.littleton.co.us> Cc: webmaster@wmptl.com, questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: IP vs CNAME Message-ID: <39389A87.45BAE16A@gorean.org> References: <200006030454.e534sX101369@fedde.littleton.co.us>
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Chris Fedde wrote:
>
> On Fri, 02 Jun 2000 21:27:27 -0700 Doug Barton wrote:
> +------------------
> | Nathan Vidican wrote:
> | >
> | > We are a relatively small ISP looking to grow. We're now starting to do
> | > virtualhosting for people, and thus far I've been setting up
> | > virtualhosts using cnames.
> |
> | Why are you using CNAME's? You are needlessly doubling the traffic to
> | your nameservers for every lookup. It's much better to define each host
> | as an A record that points to the IP address of your vhost'ing server.
> +------------------
>
> This is obviously incorrect. A DNS response has plenty of room in
> it for multiple records. The response to a cname query contains
> the CNAME, potentially many A records and several authority records.
True, but just because there is room for it, doesn't mean that you need
to include it. It still represents a bandwidth cost, whether you feel
it's significant or not. At best, it's considered unfriendly to
needlessly use CNAME's, especially on a permanent basis.
> The local name server is expected to cache these records to allow it to
> short circuit future requests for related data.
Completely true, and totally irrelevant. I was talking about the
requests that you actually receive at your nameserver.
> My current thinking on this issue is that it is better to use a
> CNAME record for name based virtual hosts since it preserves the
> validity of name matching between A and PTR records.
And what value do you think that has for a vhost'ing web server? I'm
not going to spend a lot of time debating with you. If you weren't
interested in advice, you shouldn't have asked for it. :)
Doug
--
"Live free or die"
- State motto of my ancestral homeland, New Hampshire
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