Re: (ngtrans) Joint DNSEXT & NGTRANS summary

[David Terrell <dbt@meat.net>]

On Wed, Aug 15, 2001 at 05:00:43PM +0700, Robert Elz wrote:
> | Still, it may not be possible to upgrade them all before we introduce A6
> | in some servers.
> 

> Actually, it would probably be easier the other way.   Adding
> anything in zone files requires deliberate administrator effort.
> People will only do that if there's a benefit.   On the other hand,
> AAAA synthesis can be slipped in along with other changes in back
> end resolvers, so that people (some people) would have it without
> really even realising it.   Some people have it now without realising
> it...

> But there's no way to get everyone to have it - which means that
> administrators will always have to add AAAA records so those people
> can find their web server, mail server, ....   And if AAAA records
> have to exist, and resolvers will be looking for them (because no
> way are all servers going to start supplying A6 all at once, even
> with a fairly broad concept of the time quantum) then there's no
> point adding A6 records at all - they'd be just one more thing that
> has to be maintained (excess duplicate data).

There's no reason why it can't be a gradual upgrade.  Authoritative
servers for zones with A6 can do AAAA synthesis at query time just
as easily as the local non-stub resolver can.  It becomes a server-side
indirection mechanism, which is available to A6-grokking caches.

Considering that like it or not A) BIND is still a majority of
nameservers, B) bind9 is the first version to support v6 transport
and C) I don't imagine Nominum/ISC/"The BIND Company" removing A6
support just because it's not "the thing", this feature is basically
already present today.  ISPs can provide A6 prefix records for their
customers, those customers can use A6 chains to point to their ISPs
and do authoritative server-side AAAA synthesis (well, ok, bind
needs to add this I guess), and most people can go on using AAAA
and be happy.

I'm squarely in the "Let's take AAAA because it works and let's get
IPv6 off the ground" camp.

-- 
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