Date: Mon, 07 Dec 1998 08:17:51 -0700 From: Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com> To: alk@pobox.com Cc: Kurt@pinboard.com, net@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: resolver behaviour Message-ID: <366BF19F.6B8B267E@softweyr.com> References: <13929.39477.406338.806610@avalon.east> <199812052221.RAA10079@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu> <13930.17883.922553.625725@avalon.east> <3.0.5.16.19981206214053.683794b8@pop.pbdhome.pinboard.com> <13931.34728.540828.941706@avalon.east>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Tony Kimball wrote:
>
> Quoth Kurt Keller on Sun, 6 December:
> :
> : If someone tries to look up a hostname which simply does not exist (not
> : every domain has hosts named ftp, mail, ns, pop, smtp...), what do you
> : expect the resolver to do? Simply try till the end of time?
>
> No, I'd like the resolver to try all of the nameservers which it is
> configured to try, not to do so unnecessarily, but to do so in a
> timely manner so that incremental delay is inconsequential. The
> information exists, out there in the DNS graph. The trick is to
> squeeze it out. I can't count the times that I have had to resort to
> manual lookups against alternate nameservers in order to make a
> connection -- and this has been going on for at least 15 years by my
> experience.
This seems odd, since DNS isn't yet 15 years old.
In most cases, trying all configured nameservers isn't going to net
anything, since the servers are pretty much heirarchical anyhow. My
network, which I consider typical, has a local nameserver which is
secondary for my own network. The primary is at my ISP, which is also
the second nameserver listed in resolv.conf. My local nameserver is
configured with my ISP nameserver as the forwarding site. The "fix"
you have described would be incredibly redundant and would only
increase traffic on my limited PPP connection.
> I'm very disappointed with this mailing list. There is a real
> problem which is not technically difficult to solve. I'm hoping that
> by raising the issue on this list, I can elicit some constructive
> dialog. While the critical commentary has been useful, more
> *constructive* suggestions would be much more encouraging.
You seem to be confusing "nobody cares about what *I think* my problem
is" with "nobody cares that a problem exists." You have described to
us a special case, which applies to your custom network and multi-
homed hosts on disjoint networks, and then expect us to leap to the
code to fix this problem not encountered by most FreeBSD users?
Since the problem is not technically difficult to solve, we will
patiently wait for YOUR patches to review, and then we can discuss
what is the most constructive way to make them available for other
FreeBSD users who might need them.
--
"Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?"
Wes Peters Softweyr LLC
http://www.softweyr.com/~softweyr wes@softweyr.com
To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-net" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?366BF19F.6B8B267E>