Re: dns and software, was Re: Reliable Cloud host ?

[Owen DeLong <owen () delong com>]

On Mar 1, 2012, at 6:26 AM, William Herrin wrote:

> On Thu, Mar 1, 2012 at 7:20 AM, Owen DeLong <owen () delong com> wrote:
> > The simpler approach and perfectly viable without mucking
> > up what is already implemented and working:
> >
> > Don't keep returns from GAI/GNI around longer than it takes
> > to cycle through your connect() loop immediately after the GAI/GNI call.
>
> The even simpler approach: create an AF_NAME with a sockaddr struct
> that contains a hostname instead of an IPvX address. Then let
> connect() figure out the details of caching, TTLs, protocol and
> address selection, etc.  Such a connect() could even support a revised
> TCP stack which is able to retry with the other addresses at the first
> subsecond timeout rather than camping on each address in sequence for
> the typical system default of two minutes.

That's not simpler for the following reasons:

1.      It takes away abilities to manage the connect() process that some
        applications want.

2.      It requires a rewrite of a whole lot of software built on the current
        mechanisms.

Most systems provide a mechanism for overriding the timeout for
connect().

Further, there are lots of classes, libraries, etc. that you can already use
if you want to abstract the gai/gni + connect functionality.

What exists isn't broken at the API level. Please stop trying to fix what
is not broken.

Owen