From: Jenny Liu (jen@cs.washington.edu)
Date: Wed Nov 17 2004 - 06:26:17 PST
The paper presents the Domain Name System that the commerical internet
uses today. It was developed to replace the previous HOSTS.TXT system
of publishing the mapping for host names and address, which stored all
mappings in a single file which was distributed to all hosts from a
single central host.
DNS allows the distribution of mappings to scale (as the number of hosts
on the internet grows) which was obviously not considered at all when
the HOSTS.TXT system was adopted. It does this by maintaining the
mapping information on multiple name servers and having hosts contact a
name server for specific information when they need it.
Organization-wide caches of mappings are suggested as well.
DNS's hierarchical name space also allows the number and organization of
host names to scale as the number of hosts grows. The hierarchical
structure also allows for easy administrative subdivisions of a domain.
DNS was designed to be general enough to avoid constraining forcing "a
single OS, architecture, or organization style onto its users."
Nevertheless, it's impressive that the designers of DNS were able to
convince people to switch over to DNS given that the "transition was
painful". It was interesting to see the beginnings of DNS and the
tentative nature with which it was handled.
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