Cyrus Daboo <cyrus(_at_)daboo(_dot_)name> writes:
I disagree. Just because clients have been forced to do things using
guesswork up to now does not mean we should leave them and any new
clients to do the same thing. I have heard from at least one developer
who is working on implementing SRV support for Thunderbird.
The SRV solution is simple to implement - most OS network libraries now
provide simple access to SRV record results. Site and domain admins
these days are much more comfortable with setting up SRV (required for
services like XMPP). So I think SRV represents a simple solution that
can be adopted in a reasonable timeframe.
I agree with Cyrus. Even if the market has reached a workable compromise
for the time being by using well-known host names, it has done so at the
cost of flexibility which SRV records could provide. I think it would be
very useful to document the naming conventions that will allow current
clients to find the servers, but I don't believe that's a reason to *not*
document a more robust and formal SRV record protocol as well in the hope
that clients and configurations will move to that.
--
Russ Allbery (rra(_at_)stanford(_dot_)edu)
<http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>