Paul Mockapetris On The Future of DNS

penciling_in writes "In a CircleID article called Letting DNS Loose, Paul Mockapetris, the inventor of DNS and Chief Scientist and Chairman of Nominum, gives a good indication of what is to be expected in the upcoming years when it comes to data riding on DNS: "RFID tags, UPC codes, International characters in email addresses and host names, and a variety of other identifiers could all go into DNS, and folks have occasionally proposed doing just that. It's really just a question of figuring out how to use the DNS -- it's ready to carry arbitrary identifiers." According to Paul, there are 40 or so data types to be added to DNS: "In fact the whole ENUM scheme is built out of classical DNS technology, and NAPTR is really just the latest data type to be added to the DNS. NAPTR is also just an extension of SRV, which was an extension of MX, which are DNS data types that Active Directory uses to start itself and the Internet uses to route each piece of mail." Paul also clarifies the recent BBC story previously discussed here on Slashdot."

Comments

Hmmm

[Shut the fuck up!]

I sure hope they can resolve all the problems.

Re:Hmmm

[twoslice]

Yeah, especially when China is coming out with their Domein system and over 50% of the DNS entries are Wong...

Re:Hmmm

[gid13]

My new year's resolution is 1600 by 1200.

Oh dear god, I can't believe I just said that.

Re:Hmmm

[Trashman]

You must be the authority on bad puns.

Maybe it's word thing

[tarquin_fim_bim]

'classical DNS technology'

But to me classical means outdated.

... there are 40 or so data types..

[pjwalen]

I would like to propose a new "IN GEEK" resource record for DNS. So I can find myself on the internet easier!

Re:... there are 40 or so data types..

[lisany]

A real geek always knows where she is on the Internet.

Re:... there are 40 or so data types..

[Anonymous Coward]

She? There are female geeks!?!
My world is coming undone. I curse at thee, slashdot!

Really?

[Greyfox]

So whitehouse ctrl+enter...?

They're right...

[b00m3rang]

DNS isn't nearly bloated enough. Let's make all DNS servers run Active Directory on Windows, so we can store phone numbers, golf scores, medical records, and political party affiliation. Then, since it's an 'improvement', we can all rest assured our security concerns have been addressed. Let's get BIND rock solid, then get fancy if you're into that sort of thing.

Re:naming conventions

[PacoTaco]

Two things make the TLDs pretty much meaningless: a traditional TLD (.com etc.) does not neccesarily indicate the type of site

Sure it does:

.com = porn
.net = porn
.org = porn
.
.
.

Re:Why not an IP address?

[MavEtJu]

why not give it an IPv6 address

$ ping6 -c 5 2001:4f8:4:7:2e0:81ff:fe21:6564
--- 2001:4f8:4:7:2e0:81ff:fe21:6564 ping6 statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 0 packets received, 100% packet loss

Somebody stole a book!

Re:naming conventions

[aardwolf204]

You mean like, AOL Keywords.. Ugh, no thank you. Its not really broken so dont fix it.

If it pains you so much to type in yahoo.com (as if you really need www. anymore, most all sites work fine without it) then just type in "216.109.118.73" and be done with it.