a recommendation

I couldn't find an appropriate email address for the following recommendation.  If you would forward it to the appropriate location it would be appreciated.

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The <BASE> tag works fine only when DNS is working properly.  That is occasionally a problem.  For example, today in some locations - my office being one - my ISP had a DNS error and it probably won't be corrected for 12 hours.  

One thing I could do is change all my web pages to use the dotted notation (63.123.321.3xx) and skip the DNS problem.  However, that defeats the flexibility that DNS provides when the machine address changes.

My recommendation is to expand the <BASE> tag to include the dotted address in addition the the 'href' attribute.  For example, it might look something like this:

<base href="http://www.mycompany.com" dotnum="208.239.76.34" />

When DNS fails the dotnum is attempted.  If the dotnum is still valid the <BASE> tag acts as its own DNS and the web page should still be displayed despite the DNS error.

Bill