sortlist question

[Jim Reid]

>>>>> "Thomas" == Thomas Duterme <thomas at madeforchina.com> writes:

    Thomas> But, on microsoft clients, (Win 98), the clients don't
    Thomas> seem to give a damn what the nameserver says.  ie, they
    Thomas> still do the round robin thing.  Is this a deficieny in
    Thomas> the microsoft DNS resolver?

Well from what you've said, it looks that way. Who knows if M$'s DNS
code implements address sorting?

There's little point in having name servers or resolvers sort DNS
answers unless you can control that everything does this. All it takes
is one server or resolver that doesn't follow the chosen sorting
policy and the scheme falls apart. [But you already know that.... :-)]
There's no DNS requirement for the resource records in an answer to
always be returned in the same order. A name server that round-robins
the answers is entitled to do that. It's up to the client to figure
out for itself what is the "best" resource record in the answer, or if
there even is one. Clients shouldn't assume the records in the answer
section have been arranged in some sort of order.