Subject: draft-costanzo-dns-gl-02.txt

From: Mike Davison <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 31 May 2000 22:04:36 -0700

The idea of using DNS to determine the geographic location of a host
or router has merit, but can we expect administrators to use this
feature? It seems like a significant configuration task. Opinions? 

Thanks,
Mike

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From: Bill Manning <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2000 06:07:54 -0700 (PDT)

% The idea of using DNS to determine the geographic location of a host
% or router has merit, but can we expect administrators to use this
% feature? It seems like a significant configuration task. Opinions? 
% 
% Thanks,
% Mike
% 
% to unsubscribe send a message to [email-masked] with
% the word 'unsubscribe' in a single line as the message text body.

Given a choice, LOC better meets the needs of several applications
that I am aware of.  I see little direct value in the GL proposal.

--bill

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From: "Matt Crawford" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 01 Jun 2000 09:07:05 -0500

> feature? It seems like a significant configuration task. Opinions? 

I think that it

	Has no obvious value,

	Is unlikely to be widely used -- for privacy and other reasons,

	Could be done as well in a TXT record,

	Could be done better with the RP record of RFC 1183,

	Is just plain silly with the "S3".

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From: Eric Brunner <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 01 Jun 2000 11:55:29 -0400

Last fall Haitao Tang (Nokia) and I (then Nokia) discussed the issues. This
lead to an I-D (I didn't co-author it) and the SPATIAL BoF at Adelaid (busy
leaving Nokia, didn't attend).

I don't see why an interesting collection of problems and solutions has to
get jammed into some variation of the kitchen sink. Not (yet) reflected in
the *-locality-* draft (Haitao's or mine) are the discussion between myself
and Dave Mills, which I'll get around to after Pittsburg.

-E

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From: "Al Costanzo" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 31 May 2000 13:22:48 -0400

> Could be done better with the RP record of RFC 1183,

Al replies:

Matt,

How does this:

RP    louie.trantor.umd.edu.  LAM1.people.umd.edu.

show a physical geograpic location?!?!?

This record is deisigned to be easy to use and two dimensional....

come on... do you read this stuff first :-)

-al

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From: "Matt Crawford" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 01 Jun 2000 12:50:48 -0500

> come on... do you read this stuff first :-)

Absolutely.

> show a physical geograpic location?!?!?

When coupled with one or more records at the LAM1 label, perfectly.
Furthermore, multiple thingies at the same location (which in your
location scheme will be extremely common) can share the location
records.

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From: "Eric A. Hall" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 01 Jun 2000 11:42:17 -0700

> show a physical geograpic location?!?!?

In your example, the RP TXT field is pointing to a TXT record for that
person, which is not a requirement. The TXT record can point to
anything, including data about the specific host that's being RP'd, or
can be a common record for a zone, or whatever.

   .		RP	admins.ehsco.com.	admins.ehsco.com.

   admins	TXT	("please send problem reports to:"
			"e-mail: [email-masked]"
			"phone: +1-650-555-1212"
			"fax: +1-650-555-1212"
			"postal address")*

Given that street addresses are entirely free-form and have absolutely
zero consistency across national lines, they can only be accurately
represented with TXT records. It might be nice to have a record that
explicitly defines a mailing/physical address, but there's no way that
it can be structured with any form of universal meaning. As such, its
only value would be faster searching ("ls -t GL").

However, given that DNS is not a very good kitchen-sink directory
service (the lack of authenticated vs anonymous answers for the same
resource on the same server limits it tremendously), we probably should
not be encouraging people trying to use it as a repository for every
piece of data that is imaginable.

Getting back to the specific GL RR, more-precise versions of this RR
already exist. If you want to provide additional types of free-form
data, use TXT records. If you want to link this data to RP, you're free
to do so. I don't believe that we should develop a specific RR for this
particular purpose however.

-- 
Eric A. Hall                                            [email-masked]
+1-650-685-0557                                    http://www.ehsco.com

* this formatting doesn't work, and is for illustration purposes only