Mirror Listings Though TXT DNS Records?

mackman asks: "I was wondering if anyone has ever though about using their DNS servers to provide mirror information? A specially formated TXT-record could easily provide a DNS-cache-friendly mirror listing. A TXT-record would just need a list of servers and paths, or perhaps a more complicated mapping for servers which only mirror a subset of the original site. This would allow for much more flexibility than a basic round-robin A-record scheme. For example, instead of pounding the Red Hat web server to get a mirror listing (or relying on Slashdot posts for that matter), why not do a 'dig -t txt mirrors.redhat.com'? Of course we could build this into download managers like wget."

Comments

How about ENRP?

[brianjcain]

Instead of shoehorning in functionality into a free-form field (or so I assume, by its name), why not use something more appropriate? Why not write an I-D about how DNS should include "MIRROR" records? I'll leave it to the mailing lists to debate whether DNS should know so much about a name, and the specifics of what exactly is meant by "mirror" (what content, what protocols, etc.).

The IETF has some great things cooking. RSerPool, e.g. -- though it's not designed primarily for load-distribution (rather uptime, AFAIK). Perhaps I'm suggesting you use a hammer to crack a nut, but this might abate the need for posting mirrors, like you said.

Open Source is such a beautiful thing. It's unfortunate that so much of its energy is spent writing competing implementations of various similar protocols. But I digress.

RFC 2052

[gehrehmee]

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2052.txt Doesn't do everything, but it definately accomplishes more advanced mirroring & balancing anyways. Combined with a little virtual-hosting on the mirror's side, all that's really missing is partial mirrors, as far as I can see.