cname quick question

[Brad Knowles]

At 3:38 PM -0700 3/7/01, Cricket Liu wrote:

>  If you added:
>
>  www.starwarsepisode2.com.    IN    CNAME    starwarsepisode2.lucasfilm.com.
>
>  then wouldn't you just add the MX records to starwarsepisode2.lucasfilm.com?

	Right, that works fine for movies.  But if we have 
"old-domain-that-has-worked-for-ten-years.com" and we now alias this 
to "brand-new-domain-that-no-one-has-ever-heard-of-before.com", do we 
really want to break all mail that would be sent to 
"user at old-domain-that-has-worked-for-ten-years.com"?

	No, I submit that the CNAME technique could be fine to reduce the 
number of unnecessary zones (e.g., the case of domains being 
registered for new movies at they come out), but it does not solve 
the general problem.


	IMO, if this matter has been discussed for this long on this 
mailing list, I'm convinced that if the feature is available at all, 
then people will try to abuse it for things it simply cannot do 
(according to the DNS protocol as it now exists).

	The result is you either get frustrated users who can't use 
aliases for what they want, when they clearly see that the feature is 
available but don't understand why it can't be used for the kind of 
service they want, or you get more and more garbage being put in the 
DNS.

	Your choice, but I think that both are bad ideas.

--
======================================================================
Brad Knowles, <brad.knowles at skynet.be>