In article <mailman.212.1399660752.26362.bind-us...@lists.isc.org>, Kevin Darcy <k...@chrysler.com> wrote:
> On 5/9/2014 6:59 AM, Tony Finch wrote: > > Dave Warren <da...@hireahit.com> wrote: > >> I actually think that MX records were a boneheaded thing to do, had email > >> started using SRV records in the first place we might be in a position now > >> where using SRV records is the defacto standard if not the actual standard > >> for > >> all services. (No offense to the folks that made MX records happen, I > >> realize > >> that in historical context it was the correct decision and it solved the > >> very > >> immediate problem -- I'm just saying that in an ideal world, SRV records > >> instead of MX records would solved the same problem in a more generic > >> fashion, > >> and would have pushed us to a better place for other protocols) > > It is interesting to look at the old RFCs and see how many false starts it > > took to get to the MX design. Mail was the first heavily virtualized > > application so I think their failure to generalize was forgivable, > > especially since they were also dealing with the massive problem of > > gatewaying between dozens of balkanized mail networks. > > > > http://stuff.mit.edu/afs/athena/reference/net-directory/documents/JANET-Mail > > -Gateways.ps > > > Indeed. Hindsight is 20/20. Mail was the "killer app" for the early > Internet, and providing a way to route it over the Internet, with > automatic load-balancing and failover, was a major achievement. Sure, > the IETF could have spent a few more years coming up with a "generic" > way to do things, throwing in -- as SRV eventually did -- port > reassignment, weighting and namespace semantics, but how much would that > delay have stunted the growth of the nascent technology? Maybe it would > have resulted in OSI/X.400 surpassing SMTP as the predominant mail > transport, and we'd all be *miserable*. Actually some of us who were already using a more sophisticated naming scheme[1] were disappointed that the DNS was really only a replacement for HOSTS.TXT. That was one of the few downsides of joining the Internet. Sam [1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JANET_NRS> 3rd paragraph -- The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336. _______________________________________________ Please visit https://lists.isc.org/mailman/listinfo/bind-users to unsubscribe from this list bind-users mailing list bind-users@lists.isc.org https://lists.isc.org/mailman/listinfo/bind-users
