SRV record promotion (was: DNS & portnumbers)

[Kevin Darcy]

Well, to be perfectly blunt, I think one of the major barriers to
acceptance is that SRV records are *BUTT-UGLY* in master-file format, and
this is rather unappealing to those folks who would be maintaining them.
This is not an inherent deficiency in SRV records _per_se_, but rather a
result of trying to cram too much information into a rigid, text-oriented
file format. Front-ended Dynamic Update tools and/or BIND 9's ability to
use alternative backend databases should make this only a temporary
problem...

By the way, you should update your site to reflect the supercession of
RFC 2052 by RFC 2782.


- Kevin

vanrein at my-deja.com wrote:

> Hello,
>
> Once again, SRV records came up...
>
> > > Maybe a strange question, but is it possible to make an entry in the
> > > DNS for a certain host, to let it connect on a certain port?
> >
> > The good news is that SRV records allow you to specify a port number,
> > as well as a name, with a particular service location.
> >
> > The bad news is that SRV-aware web clients are probably years away and
> > there is no other way for DNS to express port number information.
>
> I've been disgruntled by thae lack of client support ever since I learnt
> about SRV records. Actually, I was at the verge of reinventing the SRV
> wheel when I discovered them!
>
> I think it is most important to attract attention to SRV records; I just
> wrote an article on Domain Hosting for the magazine "Linux Journal",
> popular among developers as well as sysadmins in the Linux community,
> and took the chance to dwell on SRV records. Let's hope it makes people
> see the usefulness of the things!
>
> I set up a sort of "SRV promotion" website, featuring a (currently very
> sad) list of supporting tools; please tell me if you have anything to
> add! I'm trying to break the cyclic reasoning of not using SRV records
> because they're not used. Help out if you can!
>
> The stuff is at:
>         http://dns.vanrein.org/srv
>         http://dns.vanrein.org/srv/tools
>
> Cheers,
> Rick van Rein.
>
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Before you buy.