Subject: 'Local' names questions

From: Erik Guttman <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 9 Aug 1999 13:35:56 +0200 (MET DST)

I have a couple questions about draft-ietf-dnsind-local-names-07.txt.
I apologize if all of this discussion has already been covered in the
WG.  

1. Why is 'local' defined to be a TLD at all?  Why not specify that
   it *only* has private meaning?

2. I don't really understand the assignments of qualified local names
   as discussed in the draft.  In the figure in section 2, private IP
   addresses for privhost1 is given, as an example in section 3, as
   privhost1.a2.local.  How was 'a2' arrived at here?  Would this
   require registration under '.local'? 

   I understand that at the .local TLD privhost1.local would very
   easily be ambiguous. 

3. Would the top level 'local.' DNS servers resolve different local
   name domains (such as 'a2.local' in the example in the draft)?
 
4. Why shouldn't the default for local name resolution be to use
   the local version of the .local zone?  The following text implies
   that the default behavior would be the same as for global name
   resolution.  It seems to me that local domains would normally
   be deployed autonomously, that is, administered purely within a
   given site.
  
     It is also possible for an enclave to locally configure its own
     version of the .local zone.  Depending on its enclave boundary
     implementation, it might be able to constrain all of its internal
     references to .local to use its own variant version.  This version
     could have whatever private addresses were desired for the name
     servers involved.  Such a configuration MAY be used, but it is
     recommended that the globally accessible .local specified herein be
     used for uniformity.  That way, even a unconstrained resolver
     starting from the normal root servers (i.e., an "out of the box"
     resolver) will correctly resolve or fail to resolve names under
     .local depending on the resolvers location in the network as
     specified herein.

5. Am I right in assuming that the local name, in a network with no
   official 'qualified' local domain, would be just <host>.local?

   I am interested in the problem of 'zero configuration networking'.
   In such a network, a device (say a microwave oven) would come 
   preconfigured with a local domain name (say "Zaposonic3243.local",
   where Zaposonic3243 would be the model of the oven).  I understand
   that if I bought two such devices, they would be aliases of each
   other until one or both were reconfigured.
   
I am not on the namedroppers mailing list.  Please respond to me directly.

Regards,

Erik Guttman
Sun Microsystems