Re: [Sugar-devel] Notes on service discovery XS/XO

2009-04-22 Thread david
On Wed, 22 Apr 2009, Martin Langhoff wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 2:46 AM,   wrote:
>> I believe this is exactly what has been done over the last few years in the
>> DNS server/DNS cache software. they used to accept extra responses like you
>> are trying to make, but nowdays they don't.
>
> As everyone pointed out, I was wrong about plain client resolvers. My
> understanding of the tightening of the rules is that resolving servers
> -- which could end up with a poisoned cache -- now apply strict rules
> to what they accept in the additional section.
>
> But it may well be that things have been tightened further and clients
> completely ignore it. I got the "ignore unrelated / non authoritative
> entries" memo, maybe there's been an "ignore everything" one.

as noted elsewhere in this thread, clients don't cache things, so the only 
benifit of sending the extra things is if you are running a cache.

since you are able to control what software gets used on the XO, you can 
make the DNS cache be one that applies rules that allow you to send the 
extra stuff that you want. but I think that is probably not a great idea 
as it can break if that package gets changed upstream to follow a 
different set of rules.

David Lang
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Notes on service discovery XS/XO

2009-04-22 Thread Martin Langhoff
On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 2:46 AM,   wrote:
> I believe this is exactly what has been done over the last few years in the
> DNS server/DNS cache software. they used to accept extra responses like you
> are trying to make, but nowdays they don't.

As everyone pointed out, I was wrong about plain client resolvers. My
understanding of the tightening of the rules is that resolving servers
-- which could end up with a poisoned cache -- now apply strict rules
to what they accept in the additional section.

But it may well be that things have been tightened further and clients
completely ignore it. I got the "ignore unrelated / non authoritative
entries" memo, maybe there's been an "ignore everything" one.

cheers,


m
-- 
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 mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Notes on service discovery XS/XO

2009-04-21 Thread david
On Tue, 21 Apr 2009, Martin Langhoff wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 2:05 AM,   wrote:
>> my initial reaction to this is that it's going to look to the client exactly
>> the same as a bad guy trying to poison DNS by sending unasked for responses,
>> how do the clients tell the difference?
>
> They can't. That's how DNS works. Lots of ink have flowed on that very
> topic. I'm not interested in bikeshedding, I'm interesting in using
> DNS smartly, and in getting help to get it done.

if the client can't tell the difference between what you are doing and 
what the bad guys are doing, the client has no choice but to ignore any 
unexpected responses, as they may be bogus.

I believe this is exactly what has been done over the last few years in 
the DNS server/DNS cache software. they used to accept extra responses 
like you are trying to make, but nowdays they don't.

implementing something that is on it's way out (due to it becoming a 
security problem) is not a smart thing to do.

>> also note that this will require that you run some sort of DNS cache on the
>
> The standard dns resolver libs on linux (part of glibc?) caches
> alright. All platforms I know cache things alright, and it's fairly
> serious bug if your OS doesn't.

actually they don't. you can run a DNS cache on your machine (and many 
distros do by default), but it's not part of the default resolver.

>> take a look at packetfence. it does exactly that job today, for free, on
>> linux (among other platforms)
>
> Doesn't look like a fit for the XS, did you look at it?

I'm reasonably familiar with packetfence, I don't know the full 
requirements that you have for the XS, but your short description sounded 
like the job that it does (summarized as a hotel-like access control)

> Weird. I do have some things to build, but everyone ignores them and
> keeps bikeshedding.
>
> Code talks, peoples.

you are free to ignore comments, and existing tools, but if that's what 
you want, why post here, just write the tools and then we'll identify that 
you have recreated the wheel.

David Lang
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Notes on service discovery XS/XO

2009-04-21 Thread pgf
martin wrote:
 > On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 2:05 AM,   wrote:
 > 
 > > also note that this will require that you run some sort of
 > > DNS cache on the
 > 
 > The standard dns resolver libs on linux (part of glibc?) caches
 > alright. All platforms I know cache things alright, and it's fairly
 > serious bug if your OS doesn't.

really?  while that was the original design intent of the
resolver library, i didn't think it was ever implemented that way
in practice (on unix, at any rate) -- user programs tend to only
look up a name once, so caching in the resolver library wouldn't
do much good.  i believe caching is usually only done by servers.

paul
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Notes on service discovery XS/XO

2009-04-21 Thread Martin Langhoff
On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 2:05 AM,   wrote:
> my initial reaction to this is that it's going to look to the client exactly
> the same as a bad guy trying to poison DNS by sending unasked for responses,
> how do the clients tell the difference?

They can't. That's how DNS works. Lots of ink have flowed on that very
topic. I'm not interested in bikeshedding, I'm interesting in using
DNS smartly, and in getting help to get it done.

> also note that this will require that you run some sort of DNS cache on the

The standard dns resolver libs on linux (part of glibc?) caches
alright. All platforms I know cache things alright, and it's fairly
serious bug if your OS doesn't.

> take a look at packetfence. it does exactly that job today, for free, on
> linux (among other platforms)

Doesn't look like a fit for the XS, did you look at it?

Weird. I do have some things to build, but everyone ignores them and
keeps bikeshedding.

Code talks, peoples.




m
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Notes on service discovery XS/XO

2009-04-20 Thread david

On Mon, 20 Apr 2009, Martin Langhoff wrote:


On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 6:56 PM, Jonas Smedegaard  wrote:

I don't understand your question.  Sounds like prefetching that isn't
part of dns (id you perhaps think of DHCP here?)


I don't have my well-worn "DNS and BIND" book with me right now but I
am positive that the server side can decide to give the client
additional entries. It's colloquially known as the "additional
section". Been doing BIND and djbdns admin for 10+ years.

If we have - for example - <10 services, it is an excellent bw saving
strategy to push the 10 services in the additional section, so that
the client caches it in the first request, rather than issuing 10
separate requests.


my initial reaction to this is that it's going to look to the client 
exactly the same as a bad guy trying to poison DNS by sending unasked for 
responses, how do the clients tell the difference?


also note that this will require that you run some sort of DNS cache on 
the client, otherwise the particular app that did the DNS request will go 
on with life and make the exact same request again.



You are right that BIND9 is a bastard with memory consumption, and it
makes sense to use dnsmasq on the XS.  I just didn't think of that - I


Well, right now we have BIND + DHCP. BIND is a serious mismatch for
the XS. We are doing quite a bit of advanced dhcpd configuration which
we will want to replicate. For a quick summary:

- We just have a small handful of important local names to serve via
DNS (but we may want to push them in the 'additional section' as
oulined above).

- For the DHCP svc we listen on various network interfaces and assign
addresses in _different netblocks_ according to the network interface
that received the request. Tricky! See
http://dev.laptop.org/git/projects/xs-config/tree/altfiles/etc/sysconfig/olpc-scripts/dhcpd.conf.1

- To make matters more complex, my plan is to evolve towards
assigning different addresses once the user registered -- to
cordon-off internet access, a bit like pay-to-play internet-cafe
routers do. That requires a bit of poking at the dhcp daemon to
whitelist specific MAC addresses and forcing the user to re-request
the lease.


take a look at packetfence. it does exactly that job today, for free, on 
linux (among other platforms)


I think it even handles the multiple interfaces/netblocks problem, but I 
could be wrong.


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Re: [Sugar-devel] Notes on service discovery XS/XO

2009-04-20 Thread Martin Langhoff
On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 9:46 PM, Jonas Smedegaard  wrote:
> Here's my understanding:

I've read the damned specs, don't worry. I need help getting sh*t done
because there's a lot of stuff to do.

any takers?



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Re: [Sugar-devel] Notes on service discovery XS/XO

2009-04-20 Thread pgf
jonas wrote:
 > -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
 > Hash: SHA1
 > 
 > On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 09:45:28AM -0400, p...@laptop.org wrote:
 > >benjamin m. schwartz wrote:
 > > > Martin Langhoff wrote:
 > > > > The short of it is that mdns/dns-sd make sense for a small, 
 > > > > underutilised network of peers. They assume that the network is a 
 > > > > cheap resource, that broadcast messages are cheap, and that there 
 > > > > is no coordinating server.
 > > > 
 > > > mDNS assumes all of the above things.  DNS-SD does not.  DNS-SD is 
 > > > perfectly happy to work on a standard DNS server.  From the spec
 > > > 
 > > > """
 > > >This document proposes no change to the structure of DNS 
 > > >messages, and no new operation codes, response codes, resource 
 > > >record types, or any other new DNS protocol values. This document 
 > > >simply specifies a convention for how existing resource record 
 > > >types can be named and structured to facilitate service 
 > > >discovery.
 > > > """
 > > > (http://files.dns-sd.org/draft-cheshire-dnsext-dns-sd.txt)
 > >
 > >the last i looked at (and actually used) dns-sd to solve the
 > >discovery problem, it seemed that dns-sd development had stalled. 
 > >(and i haven't had a reason to look since.)  i believe we used
 > >code from Sun, which was all i could find at the time, and it
 > >wasn't what you'd call production ready.  on the other hand, we
 > >were using it in a somewhat non-standard way -- in fact, we
 > >switched to mdns soon after because it fit our deployment model
 > >better, since we didn't really have a central server.  the XS
 > >model may be a better fit.
 > >
 > >(this was all 3 or 4 years ago, btw.)
 > 
 > Here's my understanding:
 > 
 >   * DNS-SD is a formalized use of DNS records to store services
 > (rather than hosts, the most popular use of DNS records).
 > 
 >   * mDNS is DNS over multicast (using DNS-SD to resolve services).

sigh.

please disregard everything i wrote in the paragraph above.
i was mistakenly referring to DNS-SD when i should have been
referring to SLP ("service location protocol").  we migrated from
SLP to mDNS.  this has nothing to do with anything martin has
proposed for the XS.  sorry!  :-)

paul

 > 
 > So it seems to me that if you've switched from DNS-SD to mDNS, then in 
 > fact you are still relying on DNS-SD, just using an additional layer on 
 > top of it.
 > 
 > A good introduction (assumably more reliable than Wikipedia) is 
 > http://www.dns-sd.org/
 > 
 > 
 >   - Jonas
 > 
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Notes on service discovery XS/XO

2009-04-20 Thread Jonas Smedegaard
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
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On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 09:45:28AM -0400, p...@laptop.org wrote:
>benjamin m. schwartz wrote:
> > Martin Langhoff wrote:
> > > The short of it is that mdns/dns-sd make sense for a small, 
> > > underutilised network of peers. They assume that the network is a 
> > > cheap resource, that broadcast messages are cheap, and that there 
> > > is no coordinating server.
> > 
> > mDNS assumes all of the above things.  DNS-SD does not.  DNS-SD is 
> > perfectly happy to work on a standard DNS server.  From the spec
> > 
> > """
> >This document proposes no change to the structure of DNS 
> >messages, and no new operation codes, response codes, resource 
> >record types, or any other new DNS protocol values. This document 
> >simply specifies a convention for how existing resource record 
> >types can be named and structured to facilitate service 
> >discovery.
> > """
> > (http://files.dns-sd.org/draft-cheshire-dnsext-dns-sd.txt)
>
>the last i looked at (and actually used) dns-sd to solve the
>discovery problem, it seemed that dns-sd development had stalled. 
>(and i haven't had a reason to look since.)  i believe we used
>code from Sun, which was all i could find at the time, and it
>wasn't what you'd call production ready.  on the other hand, we
>were using it in a somewhat non-standard way -- in fact, we
>switched to mdns soon after because it fit our deployment model
>better, since we didn't really have a central server.  the XS
>model may be a better fit.
>
>(this was all 3 or 4 years ago, btw.)

Here's my understanding:

  * DNS-SD is a formalized use of DNS records to store services
(rather than hosts, the most popular use of DNS records).

  * mDNS is DNS over multicast (using DNS-SD to resolve services).

So it seems to me that if you've switched from DNS-SD to mDNS, then in 
fact you are still relying on DNS-SD, just using an additional layer on 
top of it.

A good introduction (assumably more reliable than Wikipedia) is 
http://www.dns-sd.org/


  - Jonas

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Re: [Sugar-devel] Notes on service discovery XS/XO

2009-04-20 Thread Martin Langhoff
On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 6:56 PM, Jonas Smedegaard  wrote:
> I don't understand your question.  Sounds like prefetching that isn't
> part of dns (id you perhaps think of DHCP here?)

I don't have my well-worn "DNS and BIND" book with me right now but I
am positive that the server side can decide to give the client
additional entries. It's colloquially known as the "additional
section". Been doing BIND and djbdns admin for 10+ years.

If we have - for example - <10 services, it is an excellent bw saving
strategy to push the 10 services in the additional section, so that
the client caches it in the first request, rather than issuing 10
separate requests.

> You are right that BIND9 is a bastard with memory consumption, and it
> makes sense to use dnsmasq on the XS.  I just didn't think of that - I

Well, right now we have BIND + DHCP. BIND is a serious mismatch for
the XS. We are doing quite a bit of advanced dhcpd configuration which
we will want to replicate. For a quick summary:

 - We just have a small handful of important local names to serve via
DNS (but we may want to push them in the 'additional section' as
oulined above).

 - For the DHCP svc we listen on various network interfaces and assign
addresses in _different netblocks_ according to the network interface
that received the request. Tricky! See
http://dev.laptop.org/git/projects/xs-config/tree/altfiles/etc/sysconfig/olpc-scripts/dhcpd.conf.1

 - To make matters more complex, my plan is to evolve towards
assigning different addresses once the user registered -- to
cordon-off internet access, a bit like pay-to-play internet-cafe
routers do. That requires a bit of poking at the dhcp daemon to
whitelist specific MAC addresses and forcing the user to re-request
the lease.

 - It would be nice to resolve dhcp-assigned hostname->addresses and PTRs

> suggested it as a caching-only on the XOs.  ISC DHCPd has a complex
> macro language, however, which might be the upsight you cannot live
> without. Beware that it is DHCP, not DNS ;-)

dnsmasq offers dhcp. If we put in the effort to switch from BIND, and
get consolidate on a single daemon, we win big time. Remember: this is
an embedded platform and each meg we free up is a bit more scale we
eke out of low-spec'd servers.

> Tell me more specifically what you fear can be tricky to handle in
> dnsmasq, either DHCP or DNS parts, and I shall have a look if I am any
> good at helping out.

Well, I've fleshed it out as much as I could. I don't think it's easy,
and it probably means discussing it in the dnsmasq list (pfg says the
author is really nice), trying out alternatives, seeing what works,
whether any of the weird configs we want works but gobbles up RAM,
segfaults on Wednesdays, etc.

But if you can give me a hand taking control of this, it will be
hugely welcome, and you got guaranteed free beers in all the
conferences we meet at.

cheers,



m
-- 
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 mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect
 - ask interesting questions
 - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Notes on service discovery XS/XO

2009-04-20 Thread Jonas Smedegaard
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 04:08:30PM +0200, Martin Langhoff wrote:
>On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 3:53 PM, Jonas Smedegaard  wrote:
>> DNS-SD using unicast DNS seems reasonable to me too.
>
>If we can do without the avahi gunk, and use it in a way that is not 
>optimised for user driven browsing but for automated selection of 
>services, then it might work.
>
>> Looking closer at the RFC, the initial service queries do have an 
>> added overhead in that a layer of indirection is used (not SRV -> A, 
>> but instead PTR -> SRV + TXT -> A).  But standard DNS optimizations 
>> apply, so SOA record should allow clients to preserve bandwidth 
>> through caching.
>
>Can we teach dnsmasq to push all the relevant records with the SOA 
>record?

I don't understand your question.  Sounds like prefetching that isn't 
part of dns (id you perhaps think of DHCP here?)

As I understand dns, if you request a SOA record, then you get a SOA 
record and only that.  You can request the whole domain, but that does 
not seem bandwidth saving to me.

The main bandwidth saver, I believe, is that of sane query caching and 
knowledge of the segments of the domain structure.


>> In other words: Install dnsmasq on the XOs, use plain standard DNS 
>> internally and on the wire, setup DNS-SD entries in a standard 
>> nameserver on the XS, and extend Sugar to support DNS-SD.
>>
>> I'd be happy to help compose standard BIND9 files, if that is what 
>> will be used on the XS.
>
>If we have a dnsmasq resident expert, I rather use your help 
>transitioning to dnsmasq (note - with several bits of weird dhcp 
>rules). There is no upside to BIND and plenty of downsides, starting 
>with the >25MB memory footprint.

If that's me you titulate so nicely, then you are way too kind:

I have only little experience with dnsmasq used as a caching-only name 
server, i.e. zero experience with dnsmasq as a "real" name server 
containing local data.

You are right that BIND9 is a bastard with memory consumption, and it 
makes sense to use dnsmasq on the XS.  I just didn't think of that - I 
suggested it as a caching-only on the XOs.  ISC DHCPd has a complex 
macro language, however, which might be the upsight you cannot live 
without. Beware that it is DHCP, not DNS ;-)

It seems from its changelog that dnsmasq supports DNS-SD since version 
2.36.


Tell me more specifically what you fear can be tricky to handle in 
dnsmasq, either DHCP or DNS parts, and I shall have a look if I am any 
good at helping out.


  - Jonas


[1] 
http://twistedmatrix.com/pipermail/twisted-python/2003-July/004909.html

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Re: [Sugar-devel] Notes on service discovery XS/XO

2009-04-20 Thread pgf
martin wrote:
 > On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 3:53 PM, Jonas Smedegaard  wrote:
 > > DNS-SD using unicast DNS seems reasonable to me too.
 > 
 > If we can do without the avahi gunk, and use it in a way that is not
 > optimised for user driven browsing but for automated selection of
 > services, then it might work.
 > 
 > > Looking closer at the RFC, the initial service queries do have an added
 > > overhead in that a layer of indirection is used (not SRV -> A, but
 > > instead PTR -> SRV + TXT -> A).  But standard DNS optimizations apply,
 > > so SOA record should allow clients to preserve bandwidth through
 > > caching.
 > 
 > Can we teach dnsmasq to push all the relevant records with the SOA record?
 > 
 > > In other words: Install dnsmasq on the XOs, use plain standard DNS
 > > internally and on the wire, setup DNS-SD entries in a standard
 > > nameserver on the XS, and extend Sugar to support DNS-SD.
 > >
 > > I'd be happy to help compose standard BIND9 files, if that is what will
 > > be used on the XS.
 > 
 > If we have a dnsmasq resident expert, I rather use your help
 > transitioning to dnsmasq (note - with several bits of weird dhcp
 > rules). There is no upside to BIND and plenty of downsides, starting
 > with the >25MB memory footprint.

i'm a big fan of dnsmasq, but be sure it will fulfill all your
needs before doing too much work on it -- it's not quite a
full-fledged DNS server -- as an example, dnsmasq doesn't support CNAME:
   http://lists.thekelleys.org.uk/pipermail/dnsmasq-discuss/2006q1/000583.html

 >  - ask interesting questions

simon kelley (dnsmasq author) is extremely helpful on the dnsmasq
list, btw, so it shouldn't be too hard to get interesting
answers, as well.  :-)

paul
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Notes on service discovery XS/XO

2009-04-20 Thread Martin Langhoff
On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 3:53 PM, Jonas Smedegaard  wrote:
> DNS-SD using unicast DNS seems reasonable to me too.

If we can do without the avahi gunk, and use it in a way that is not
optimised for user driven browsing but for automated selection of
services, then it might work.

> Looking closer at the RFC, the initial service queries do have an added
> overhead in that a layer of indirection is used (not SRV -> A, but
> instead PTR -> SRV + TXT -> A).  But standard DNS optimizations apply,
> so SOA record should allow clients to preserve bandwidth through
> caching.

Can we teach dnsmasq to push all the relevant records with the SOA record?

> In other words: Install dnsmasq on the XOs, use plain standard DNS
> internally and on the wire, setup DNS-SD entries in a standard
> nameserver on the XS, and extend Sugar to support DNS-SD.
>
> I'd be happy to help compose standard BIND9 files, if that is what will
> be used on the XS.

If we have a dnsmasq resident expert, I rather use your help
transitioning to dnsmasq (note - with several bits of weird dhcp
rules). There is no upside to BIND and plenty of downsides, starting
with the >25MB memory footprint.

cheers,



m
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 mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Notes on service discovery XS/XO

2009-04-20 Thread Jonas Smedegaard
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 07:26:30AM -0400, Benjamin M. Schwartz wrote:
>Martin Langhoff wrote:
>> The short of it is that mdns/dns-sd make sense for a small, 
>> underutilised network of peers. They assume that the network is a 
>> cheap resource, that broadcast messages are cheap, and that there is 
>> no coordinating server.
>
>mDNS assumes all of the above things.  DNS-SD does not.  DNS-SD is 
>perfectly happy to work on a standard DNS server.  From the spec
>
>"""
>   This document proposes no change to the structure of DNS messages, 
>   and no new operation codes, response codes, resource record types, 
>   or any other new DNS protocol values. This document simply specifies 
>   a convention for how existing resource record types can be named and 
>   structured to facilitate service discovery.
>"""
>(http://files.dns-sd.org/draft-cheshire-dnsext-dns-sd.txt)
>
>I'm not particularly knowledgeable about the XS service discovery 
>requirements, nor about DNS, so I can't reasonably tell you to use 
>DNS-SD.
> What I can say is that it seems like it should be workable.

DNS-SD using unicast DNS seems reasonable to me too.

Looking closer at the RFC, the initial service queries do have an added 
overhead in that a layer of indirection is used (not SRV -> A, but 
instead PTR -> SRV + TXT -> A).  But standard DNS optimizations apply, 
so SOA record should allow clients to preserve bandwidth through 
caching.

In other words: Install dnsmasq on the XOs, use plain standard DNS 
internally and on the wire, setup DNS-SD entries in a standard 
nameserver on the XS, and extend Sugar to support DNS-SD.

I'd be happy to help compose standard BIND9 files, if that is what will 
be used on the XS.


 - Jonas

- -- 
* Jonas Smedegaard - idealist og Internet-arkitekt
* Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

 [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Notes on service discovery XS/XO

2009-04-20 Thread pgf
benjamin m. schwartz wrote:
 > Martin Langhoff wrote:
 > > The short of it is that mdns/dns-sd make sense for a small,
 > > underutilised network of peers. They assume that the network is a
 > > cheap resource, that broadcast messages are cheap, and that there is
 > > no coordinating server.
 > 
 > mDNS assumes all of the above things.  DNS-SD does not.  DNS-SD is
 > perfectly happy to work on a standard DNS server.  From the spec
 > 
 > """
 >This document proposes no change to the structure of DNS messages,
 >and no new operation codes, response codes, resource record types,
 >or any other new DNS protocol values. This document simply specifies
 >a convention for how existing resource record types can be named and
 >structured to facilitate service discovery.
 > """
 > (http://files.dns-sd.org/draft-cheshire-dnsext-dns-sd.txt)

the last i looked at (and actually used) dns-sd to solve the
discovery problem, it seemed that dns-sd development had stalled. 
(and i haven't had a reason to look since.)  i believe we used
code from Sun, which was all i could find at the time, and it
wasn't what you'd call production ready.  on the other hand, we
were using it in a somewhat non-standard way -- in fact, we
switched to mdns soon after because it fit our deployment model
better, since we didn't really have a central server.  the XS
model may be a better fit.

(this was all 3 or 4 years ago, btw.)

paul
=-
 paul fox, p...@laptop.org
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Notes on service discovery XS/XO

2009-04-20 Thread Benjamin M. Schwartz
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Martin Langhoff wrote:
> The short of it is that mdns/dns-sd make sense for a small,
> underutilised network of peers. They assume that the network is a
> cheap resource, that broadcast messages are cheap, and that there is
> no coordinating server.

mDNS assumes all of the above things.  DNS-SD does not.  DNS-SD is
perfectly happy to work on a standard DNS server.  From the spec

"""
   This document proposes no change to the structure of DNS messages,
   and no new operation codes, response codes, resource record types,
   or any other new DNS protocol values. This document simply specifies
   a convention for how existing resource record types can be named and
   structured to facilitate service discovery.
"""
(http://files.dns-sd.org/draft-cheshire-dnsext-dns-sd.txt)

I'm not particularly knowledgeable about the XS service discovery
requirements, nor about DNS, so I can't reasonably tell you to use DNS-SD.
 What I can say is that it seems like it should be workable.

- --Ben
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