[governance] Purposes of DNS (Was: Where are we going?)

[Karl Auerbach]

Mawaki Chango wrote:

> Imagine an intenret without DNS... and we were only to use IP
> numbers to navigate the Web.

DNS was established not merely to add a mnemonic or semantic layering 
over numbers.

In computer science there is an old phrase - every problem can be solved 
by adding another level of indirection.

DNS is such a layer of indirection.  We gain a lot through DNS with 
regard to establishing service names that can be remapped through DNS 
without affecting the application uttering those names.

And DNS provides a one-to-many mapping through which a single name may 
represent several service points.  This is very useful and not possible 
through an address based system.

Not all DNS names contain strings that are easily parsed by people. 
in-addr.arpa names look like sequences of numbes, IDN's will be opaque 
to most human eyes, ENUM names don't resonate with any emotional power, 
and (blame me, RFC1001/1002) the DNS name used inside CIFS are bit 
shuffled into incomprehensibility, etc.

		--karl--

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