On Wed, Dec 30, 1998 at 09:23:26PM -0800, Javilk wrote:
> Technology is here to serve people, not the other way around.
That does not mean that trying to use a hammer to drive in a screw is
a wise decision.
> Meaning every franchise and chain company has to force every user to
> fetch multiple pages every time he or she wants to order from a local
> business... That is an absurd waste of user time and bandwidth.
Fine. Put it on the home page -- and make the home page fast-loading,
as it ought to be, with no Java, no JavaScript, minimal graphics, etc.
Problem solved.
> Ah, but now we get to the key point. Topology. Topology is related
> to, but not an exact mapping of, geography.
Internet toplogy has almost no relationship to geography. It hasn't
for well over a decade. It has less every day.
> Correct me if I am wrong... DNS is the method of translating names to
> IP addresses, it "knows" the topology by the way it works, and reduces
> names to routing information. Since we wish to translate names, or words,
> to topographic routing information, DNS really IS the answer.
Sorry, but this IS wrong. DNS knows *nothing* about topology or routing.
There is an entire menagerie of protocols which are designed to handle that,
and they in turn know nothing about hostname-to-address mapping.
And NONE of these know anything about the relationship between network
location and geographical location, because -- in general -- there
isn't one.
> None of which provided end users with any level of convenience or
> automation.
I'm sorry that people don't know where they are AND want a convenient,
automated solution to that.
> > And I think you're missing a fundamental point: it is impossible
> > to help people who do not know where they are.
>
> ??? Why do you think there are "Hospital" signs on the highway?
To guide people to hospitals, which are viewed as such a time-critical
resource that guiding people to them efficiently is worth the expense
of putting up appropriate signs. I hope you see that this model does NOT
scale to every business.
> How much of the time do you really know where you are?
I know where I am *all* of the time. My life sometimes depends on it.
> > cannot be directed to resources in geographical proximity. Moreover,
> > this information cannot be reliably inferred on the basis of their
> > IP address, domain name, or anything else that's available via IP.
>
> To paraphrase McLullan, "The network is the information." It is a
> mapping... a topography.
Please cut this out and tape it to your monitor:
Internet location (IP address, etc.) provides no information
about geographical location. THERE IS NO GENERAL MAPPING from
any of: domain name, MX record, IP address to geography.
> So happens I have actually used Mapquest and the various yellow pages
> type services a fair bit for several clients. That stuff takes a LONG
> time to download!!! It is only marginally practical.
That's simply because Mapquest and those various yellow pages services are
poorly designed. (I've used them, too.) There is no inherent
reason why a better version couldn't be designed which minimized download
times, utilized geographic information such as the categories that I
suggested (or other ones), had a backend database which mapped business
URLs to lat/long coordinates, and presented this information in an
efficient manner.
> The organization which figures out how to modify DNS for topological
> name service, will reap a rich reward. Guess it won't be you,
It won't be *anybody*. DNS does not address this problem, and cannot
be modified to do so. (Neither do any of the existing routing
algorithms, by the way.)
---Rsk
Rich Kulawiec
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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