Why replicate the DNS?

Joe Abley jabley at isc.org
Thu Mar 6 02:58:20 UTC 2003



On Tuesday, Mar 4, 2003, at 07:44 Canada/Eastern, 
Michael.Dillon at radianz.com wrote:

> In any case, I don't want to replicate the DNS. It works just fine as 
> it
> is and I want to leave it alone. I especially don't want to expand the
> role of the DNS by adding features to it.

I think Bill's point was that if a distributed database is required to 
contain routing policy, why not use existing distributed database 
infrastructure to host it (i.e. the DNS). In this context, deployment 
of LDAP-accessible databases (which you advocate) is "replicating the 
DNS" (which you mention you don't want to do).

There was once a domain named under int which contained RPSL-ish 
content in TXT records, by way of example. I forget what it was called, 
now.

I think it is fair to say that the delegation chain in the DNS is 
demonstrably more effective in allowing authoritative records to be 
located than the ad-hoc partial-mesh of mirroring and key replication 
currently found in the IRR. For example, there seem to be all kinds of 
people who will helpfully add route objects to the IRR on your behalf, 
regardless of the fact that the result is multiple, conflicting records.


Joe




More information about the NANOG mailing list