DNS and Directory Services

[Simon Higgs <simon@higgs.com>]

I'd like to clarify something I was asked by Geoff Huston at the IAHC
BOF on wednesday night. I spent a 6 hour car ride thinking "wait a
minute, why did I hesitate my answer before saying what I thought I was
supposed to say".

The question was "do I think DNS should be used as a directory service?"

The mapping of the domain name to an IP address is not supposed to be a
directory service. We all know that. But indexing domain names or IP
addresses (but not them both together) could be construed as a
directory.

in-addr.arpa is essentially a directory system. It's a topological map
of the IP space that eventually resolves to a PTR entry. That appears
to be a carefully organized directory of IP numbers.

There is no equivalent for the namespace. There is no domain name
indexing system. I think that's what everyone is looking for. Whois
doesn't quite have the right front end for it to be widely adopted (aka
Yahoo/Alta Vista/etc.), even tho' it has all the data.

My answer is that the mapping done by DNS isn't a directory service,
but each layer that is mapped (domain name & IP) can easily become
searchable using a directory system. Given the use that DNS is getting
these days, that's not hard to imagine.

If anyone can explain this better, feel free to jump in!


Simon

--
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.