Re: The DNS is not a directory

[Dave Crocker <dcrocker at brandenburg.com>]

At 12:08 PM 4/24/98 +0900, Martin J. Duerst wrote:
>If you define a directory system as a system that gives multiple hits,
>you are definitely right. But the technical view that "it doesn't always
>work, so it's useless" is completely wrong. This is an user interface

My definition was in terms of taking "search" specifications, rather than
"lookup" specifications.  The simplest distinction is whether you are
permitted to do partial specifications for a key.  For directories, you
are.  For mapping services like the DNS, you are not.

Hence this is much different from a user interface issue; it pertains to
the definition of the underlying functional engine.

>Also, it's important to understand that currently, doing a search
>in a yellowpage-like search engine takes significantly more time
>than guessing, including the time it takes to get the search page,

The fact that searching takes time is the reason we do not want to
postulate a real directory service as a replacement for the DNS, in the
middle of every email and web reference.

>So such a search always looses to an estimated 2-3 guesses (most
>probably even 4-5 guesses), and it definitely always looses to

So the basic rule is that a search engine is faster than guessing, if the
guessing isn't trivial.  I agree.  (Quick.  What is the url for Southwest
Airlines?)

>The ccTLDs are not a problem. I have "guessed" many domain names in
>Switzerland and Japan, the countries I am familliar with. If you
>wouldn't live in the US, I don't think you would see that as a big
>problem.

I'll let you know in a couple of months, but I've already been told by
others in other countries that they find things like the web browser
default guessing of .com to be quite maddening.

>I agree that it's absolutely unclear how guessing might scale with
>more TLDs, but one thing is rather clear: If it doesn't, and there

I wasn't claiming that it was unclear how well guessing scaled.  I am
claiming that it doesn't scale.  The only thing that is unclear is at what
scaling point it fails.  (By many measures, it already has.)

d/
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