SRV is great if only it were implemented

[Cricket Liu]

> I learned about the "experimental" SRV records from Cricket Liu's BIND
> book.  It supports exactly what we are trying to accomplish with Web
> server high availability insofar as suggesting to clients to try other
> Web servers should the main server be unavailable.
>
> But this great feature is worthless unless the Web browsers and proxy
> servers support it, right?  So should we corporate types be requesting
> this support from Microsoft and AOL?  Or is this best handled through
> the W3C?
>
> Does anyone know what is being done to make this record type widely
> available and useful?

Microsoft's Windows 2000 uses SRV records extensively.  Windows 2000
servers advertise the services they offer via SRV records, and Windows
2000 clients find the servers that offer particular services by looking up
SRV
records.  So I'd have to say that Microsoft is pioneering this area.

If we could just get IE and Navigator to support SRV records, we'd take
care of a large proportion of the HTTP and FTP clients in use.  (Maybe
the version of IE shipped with Windows 2000 already supports SRV
records--I honestly don't know.)

cricket

Acme Byte & Wire
cricket at acmebw.com
www.acmebw.com

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