[MLB-WIRELESS] DNS: What is our zone going to look like?

hannah commodore hannah at tinfoilhat.net
Wed Mar 25 10:29:39 EST 2009


Russell Smith wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I know we don't have any firm answers on who controls the melbourne wireless domains on the internet.  But that does not stop use deciding on what we are doing going forward on the internal DNS resolution.

> Q1: What are your thoughts?
> Q2: Is this a good format and what format would you propose/support?

regardless of which parent domain is used, most of these principals have
been worked out.

IMHO the easiest way to go about this is simply to use existing
information gathered on the MW node lists and have a <node
name>.<whatever parent domain> host which includes all of the following
records:

1) IN A  simple address resolution for MW IP of given node

2) IN NS for delegating hosts under <node>.<domain> to that node.
	this allows for www.<node>.<domain> to be controlled by
	the node itself, instead of trying manage central database
	on the authoritative <parent domain> name server

3) IN LOC for giving geographic information on the node.
	see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOC_record

If <parent domain> allows for AXFR of the entire zone from 10.10/16
hosts, anyone on the MW net can see every node and every location in a
standard format.

another benefit of delegating hosts under <node>.<parent domain> may be
future use of SRV for service discovery, or even Avahi/Bonjour
publication if set up properly.


> Q3: Ideas about making DNS easy for clients?

Re split view DNS - there is no harm in allowing 10.10/16 resolution of
hosts on the internet. It would not be routable to anyone not connected
to MW, but the routing is an issue outside of DNS.

Hannah



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