Small DNS questions.

[Martin Langhoff]

On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 8:06 AM, Michael Stone <michael at laptop.org> wrote:
>  http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Network_principles#Name_resolution

Even if we were to do all sorts of DNS smartypants stuff - the only
protocol where we can play games is http. The protocol is highly
proxy-able, redirect-able and nimble, and most importantly, all the
_clients_ are specially adept and handling odd "bait-and-switch"
abuse.

For example, the kind of behaviour that you see when connecting to
commercial Wifi hotspots -- these days they mostly do the right thing
(unless your initial connection was https), but they used to muck with
DNS. Badly.

Every other (useful) protocol I can see in my /etc/services breaks if
you try this stuff. Maybe some limited interactions work -- like with
SMTP -- but overall, it just doesn't work.

We can muck with HTTP with a transparent proxy that allows us to serve
some "remote" URLs locally. I want to avoid it, but if we have to do
it, we will. Every other protocol - I plan to leave alone :-)

cheers,



m
-- 
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 martin at laptop.org -- School Server Architect
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