The End-To-End Internet (was Re: Blocking MX query)

Thu Sep 6 18:27:12 UTC 2012

On Sep 6, 2012, at 08:14 , Andrew Sullivan <asullivan at dyn.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Sep 05, 2012 at 09:39:44PM -0700, Owen DeLong wrote:
>> 
>> Never mind the fact that all the hosts trying to reach you have no
>> way to know what port to use.
> 
> Despite my scepticism of the overall project, I find the above claim a
> little hard to accept.  RFC 2052, which defined SRV in an
> experiment, came out in 1996.  SRV was moved to the standards track in
> 2000.  I've never heard an argument why it won't work, and we know
> that SRV records are sometimes in use.  Why couldn't that mechanism be
> used more widely? 
> 

If browsers started implementing it, it could.

I suppose the more accurate/detailed statement would be:

Without modifying every client on the internet, there is no way for the
clients trying to reach you to reliably be informed of this port number
situation.

If you're going to touch every client, it's easier to just do IPv6.

Owen