Assignment handed out on Thursday, March 8, 2001

Due in Recitation on 3/9/2001:

• From the textbook, read Chapter 9 on naming. Skim over the case studies, focusing on DNS. Your writing/discussion assignment:

  DNS and Grapevine have different models for maintaining the consistency of name information. In particular, DNS is more lax about consistency than Grapevine. Do you think it would be a better idea to use Grapevine for name resolution on the Internet instead of DNS? Take a side and discuss. If you prefer, base your answer using the framework below.
  
  Consider the scenario where a network administrator enters the wrong IP address for aduni.org into a root, authoritative DNS server just before that IP address is propagated to a set of non-authoritative servers. Contrast this to a scenario where an administrator enters a wrong address while updating GrapevineRServer under the Grapevine system. Assume the administrator does not realize the address being entered is wrong.
  
  Think about how the error might propagate throughout the network. Consider how long it would take to rectify the error in each scenario. Don't forget to consider the tradeoffs - you rarely get something for nothing.