(IPv6 WG CCed sorry all for cross-posting)
Dear namedroppers,
I believe that dot-local DNS (also called multicast DNS) will be
even more useful in the future. However, I suspect that there is
a problem. For example, in WiMax, a cellular standard, nodes cannot
L2 multicast. Even if they could, L2 multicast would wake up every
dormant host. Dormant mode for energy efficiency is very important
in this context. There is also a serious L2-specific signaling cost
associated with dormant mode. (I'm not entering into details.)
Dot-local DNS is also very useful in MANETs. However, you have
to flood the network to resolve a name. This consumes bandwidth
and energy in the whole network.
These problems make me think that dot-local usage is not as general
as it should be in IPv6. What about this approach?
It works exactly as multicast DNS, except that there is no multicast.
1. Let the responder's DNS name be "johnsmith.local". The responder
configures a name-based link-local IPv6 address:
link-local subnet prefix | 64bithash("johnsmith.local")
where hash is SHA1, and '|' means concatenation. It can be noted
that 64bithash("johnsmith.local") is the IPv6 interface ID.
The link-local subnet prefix is constant and well-known.
2. When the initiator user (or application) enters the name
johnsmith.local, the DNS request is sent to the above address,
instead of being multicast.
Am I missing something?
Thanks.
pars mutaf
ps: An earlier version of this work proposed the "blind" usage
of name-based addresses (also called HUMID addresses). It can
be found here:
http://www.freewebs.com/pmutaf/humid.html
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