Valdis(_dot_)Kletnieks(_at_)vt(_dot_)edu wrote:
On Wed, 31 Jul 2002 11:46:47 PDT, Ed Gerck said:
The IP address of the root server is part of any name today, and it resides
in your browser. To contrast, what I said does not have the IP address
Odd.. There's no mention of the root server in my copy of Mozilla. There's no
mention of the root server in my /etc/resolv.conf. Given my firewall rules, if
a packet arrived from a root server, it would be thrown on the floor.
Obviously Ed's understanding of DNS as it actually works, and my machine's
understanding of it, are wildly divergent. Fortunately for my productivity,
one of them actually works.
First, thank you for the opportunity to correct myself. I should have written:
"The IP address of the root server is part of any name today, and it resides
in your computer. "
Now, when your browser takes a DNS name and sends it for resolution, the
result actually depends on your browser. If you use NS 4.7, for example,
and try www.valdis.klet you most probably will NOT get a PAGE NOT FOUND.
You will get a page that has to with some of your internal browser settings,
with no warning whatosoever. Now, if you type www.valdis.klet/page.htm
you will probably get 404 PAGE NOT FOUND. The choices are all made
for you, nice no? It may be relevant, though, that they are actually the wrong
choices.
There *is* a mention in resolv.conf of 3 or 4 IP addresses that are willing
to do recursive DNS lookups for me if I ask nicely. This implies that in
normal day-to-day operation, I' stuck with whatever THEIR concept of 'root'
is.
Yes. The choice has been made for you -- just like that Netscape choice above.
Fortunately for myself, if those IP addresses get confused, I have the
technical skill to work around it, and the political clout to go down
the hall and say "Umm... Laurie? Phil? Carl? What are you guys up to?"
Of course, 99.998% of users are NOT in that position, and we need to
keep that in mind.
Yes, that is why my suggestion was for a meta-system to the DNS, which
can be chosen by the user (unlike NS and your root server hints in the
resolver) and that automatically disambiguates names -- or asks the
user to do so (if and how the user so desires).
Cheers,
Ed Gerck