hosts and schemes

This is the last important comment that I have on rfc2396bis-04,
the rest are just typos,...


Section 3.2.2, in particular the paragraph starting with
"This specification does not mandate a particular registered name
lookup technology...", is highly unclear.

In particular, it's not clear to me what restrictions schemes
can make (or not) in this respect. In my view, the current reality
(and what the document should clearly say) is as follows:

- Some schemes (e.g. file:) leave the choice of name lookup/
   resolution completely to the OS. They are mostly designed for
   local access.
- Other schemes clearly define what naming system is used.
   Examples are http:, ftp:,... They usually use DNS, but some
   schemes may use another system. How the host names actually
   get resolved/looked up may be somewhat different on different
   systems, but modulo caching,... the result should be the same.

If you think that this is different, please explain why.
If you think that my description above is going in the right
direction, please make this much clearer in the draft.


Regards,    Martin.

Received on Monday, 8 March 2004 08:57:01 UTC