[ih] DNS history and design

[John Day]

That is interesting. We were doing research on the properties of distributed databases in 1975-6 and I believe built one, but I would have to go back try to dig up the data on it.

Take care,
John

> On Jul 20, 2021, at 18:08, John Gilmore via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> Stephane Bortzmeyer via Internet-history wrote re the Domain Name System:
>>                          IMHO, the choices were basically the correct
>> ones, giving the techniques of the time (blockchain was not invented
>> yet :-)
> 
> Distributed databases weren't invented yet either!  At the time,
> there were only a handful of one-of-a-kind networks to distribute
> one on!  If I was designing the DNS today, I'd probably use an
> underlying technology more like that.
> 
> The DNS that Paul Mockapetris designed has scaled and lasted incredibly
> well, given how early in networking history it was built.  It is one of
> the few Internet protocols that uses binary packet layouts rather than
> parsing text, which made it harder to debug and evolve the protocol.
> And many things about the DNS were not really understood until decades
> later, like how an "rrset", a collection of all the Resource Records
> that have the same domain name and the same RRtype, needs to be handled
> together rather than as separable records.
> 
> But the fundamental design still survives: "zones" of resource records,
> each zone and record with a hierarchical global name, replicated N times
> on different servers, with version numbering and automated updating
> among the servers, and a "Time to Live" on each record to avoid data
> going stale.  Requests and responses via UDP with a possible TCP
> fallback.  Solid cacheing designed in for high performance, replication
> for high reliability.
> 
> It's likely that a DNS requester that hasn't changed since 1985 could
> plug in and work fine 36 years later, on the Internet of today.
> 
> Amazing!
> 
> 	John
> 	
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