From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Jun 2 22:41:42 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from dt051n0b.san.rr.com (dt051n0b.san.rr.com [204.210.32.11]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4BDF637BA19 for ; Fri, 2 Jun 2000 22:41:38 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from DougB@gorean.org) Received: from gorean.org (doug@master [10.0.0.2]) by dt051n0b.san.rr.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id WAA55554; Fri, 2 Jun 2000 22:41:27 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from DougB@gorean.org) Message-ID: <39389A87.45BAE16A@gorean.org> Date: Fri, 02 Jun 2000 22:41:27 -0700 From: Doug Barton Organization: Triborough Bridge & Tunnel Authority X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.72 [en] (X11; U; FreeBSD 5.0-CURRENT-0528 i386) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Chris Fedde Cc: webmaster@wmptl.com, questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: IP vs CNAME References: <200006030454.e534sX101369@fedde.littleton.co.us> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG 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 Do YOU Yahoo!? To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message