Re: DNS based Destination Selection

[Jay Ford <jay-ford@uiowa.edu>]

On Thu, 19 Jun 2003, David Gethings wrote:
> I do concede that there will be a number of applications that will never
> do a DNS lookup. So this obviously puts a question on whether DNS is the
> right place to do destination selection.

Right.  I think it has to be lower down than the DNS.

> The point of my suggestion is that it is a simple method of influencing
> which ingress path traffic could take for a multihomed site. It is
> simple enough for most SOHO and SME's to use and does not require much
> networking expertise - much less than using BGP.

Is it likely that small (home...) sites will be multihomed?  I'd pretty much
written them off as not pertinent.

> Will it work in every situation: no. Does it offer enough functionality
> that a reasonalbe proportion of multihomed sites will wish to use it: I
> believe so. Is the cost of changing DNS and host stacks worth it: I
> honestly do not know.
>
> I honestly don't believe we will find just one multihoming solution that
> will suit every multihomed site. I believe this method to a be good
> starting point for people new to multihoming in IPv6.

We probably will end up with multiple multihome options for IPv6, just like
we have with IPv4.  I just don't see that a DNS-based solution puts the
control at the right end or catches enough flows.

________________________________________________________________________
Jay Ford, Network Engineering Group, Information Technology Services
University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242
email: jay-ford@uiowa.edu, phone: 319-335-5555, fax: 319-335-2951