Subject: DNS VPN ID Format (Was: VPN Identifiers)

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 07:27:22 +0100

> Eric:
> I have no  problem with this, but if  there is anyone who 
> still  wants to be able to use domain names as VPN-ids, 
> I don't imagine they will go along with this ;-)

OK so lets ask the question, is there anyone that wants to use domain names
to identify VPNs?

DNS is ideal for domain name addresses and email addresses because the
email/domain names need to be  used/understood/remembered in everyday life
by end users that potentially have very little knowledge of computing. 

VPN IDs on the other hand only need to be used/understood/remembered by
network operations staff or network systems/protocols. Operations staff are
used to using machine readable parameters such as IP addresses/VLAN
IDs/DLCIs/etc and obviously systems/protocols don't care what the format of
a parameter is as long as its well defined.

Although the fact that DNS names are human readable is useful, IMO the
downsides (i.e. variable length and parsing problems) mean that this option
should be discarded.

Thanks,
Richard