[Freeciv-Dev] multiple metaservers (continued)

[Reinier Post <rp@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> On Tue, 19 Jan 1999, Reinier Post wrote:
> 
> > It may be possible technically; not politically.
> 
> What are you talking about?

About pointing DNS names to IP numbers whose reverse maps you don't own.

> It is trivial technically, and anyone who's
> ever run a DNS server will be able to show you how to do round-robin DNS
> for the metaserver.

Meaning, I can show myself.  No argument there.

> There is ABSOLUTELY NO NEED for the reverse entries
> to point at the metaserver name, in fact that is undesirable.

Correct.

> There is
> no political problem with the DNS entries. Political problems would only
> arise if someone volunteers to run a metaserver without authority to do
> so (e.g. University undergrads might not be supposed to run arbitrary
> server code and advertise it to the whole planet).

That's exactly what I meant.  Our university department does not really
want to prevent its users, including undergraduates, from running
servers on its hosts; but when they are advertised under a different
name such as metaserver.freeciv.org, the university would at least like
to be informed.

> If you're suggesting that DNS admins can somehow prevent you from pointing
> into "their" IP space, I suggest you look at some of the anti-Microsoft
> sites, many of which have links to www.microsoft.com under another name :)

We are discussing a honest service here, not a joke of some kind.
If you're trying to say that it's common and accepted practice
for DNS names to point to IP addresses without the consent of the
reverse map's owners, you're telling me something I didn't know.

> IMHO The right way to do this is the simple way...

Both methods are simple.  The round robin method avoids client-side
configuration; the client list method avoids metaserver-metaserver
communication.  The solutions are simple to combine.  My objection
against the round robin method is that it prevents end users from
running their own private metaserver - except by hacking the client, of
course.  All I can say is I would be grateful to whoever implements
the solution of his choice.

-- 
Reinier