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

[Mawaki Chango]

All that is good to know, and yes, saying the *the whole
purpose* of the DNS is semantics *would* be restrictive. Still,
most of the policy problems we are wrestling with are not due to
the technical community, and I don't find many people from the
general community (users, at large) who relate much to the
applications you're referring to. But again, you're right that
the DNS fulfil other functions than the one I *only* emphasized
earlier.

Mawaki

--- Karl Auerbach <karl at cavebear.com> wrote:

> 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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