New hacked BIND for Uniform Resource Name Authorities

(apologies to bind-workers but I thought you might be interested)

I've finally finished at least a very alpha version of a new resource
record for DNS that will return information for use by URN resolution
systems. This RR looks like this:

<domain> IN <ttl> URN <produced_on_host> <mbox> (
                <Preference>            ;preference like MX records
                <Authority_dname>       ;actual host to contact
                <Port>                  ;port to contact server on
                <Scheme>                ;final scheme used to resolve URN
                <Signature> )           ;Signature of this record

(Kind of like MX and SOA get in a bad train wreck. ;-)

Anyway,

	Preference works like MX does.
	Authority_dname is the host you need to connect to to resolve
		anything under this authority.
	Port is the port you need to connect to Authority_dname on.
	Scheme is the method by which you connect to Authority_dname.
	Signature is a MD5 of this whole record (minus the Signature of course)
		that has been encrypted by the servers private key.
		The existence of this value is very very debateable.

	NOTE: if anyone can make an even vaguely interesting case for it
	I'll take Port, Scheme and Authority_dname and combine them
	into a URL. The problem is that we don't have URLs for some
	of the scheme we'll be using....

	Wildcards are very useful things when combines with this RR.
	I've been specifically using this in conjunction with
	resolving OIDs in DNS (just reverse the order) and it works
	very well.

You can find all of this on <URL:ftp://ftp.gatech.edu/pub/uri/>.

If you are interested in playing with a running named that has this
enabled point my modified nslookup at the server fuzzl.oit.gatech.edu
(130.207.166.59) and lookup 4.636.1.4.1.6.3.1 or 5.636.1.4.1.6.3.1
(5 is wildcarded and 4 has two entries).

I'm going on vacation this week (leaving in about an hour) so I won't
be available for questions or bug reports until I arrive at the
Stockholm IETF. I've only compiled this stuff on Solaris so I 
can't gaurantee its portability....
-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Life is a game. Someone wins and someone loses. Get used to it.
<BR>
<HR><A HREF="http://www.gatech.edu/michael.html">Michael Mealling</A>

Received on Friday, 7 July 1995 10:54:50 UTC