davy@erg.sri.com (10/23/90)
Here's a philosophical question: Should there be an A record for a domain name itself? For example, our domain name is erg.sri.com. You can send mail to "user@erg.sri.com" since there's an MX record, but you can't say "ftp erg.sri.com", since there's no A record. You have to FTP to a specific host. I used to have an A record for our domain, but then I decided it was the wrong thing to do, since one machine doesn't really represent the domain. On the other hand, you could argue that if someone knows my mail address is "davy@erg.sri.com", it would be logical for them to FTP to "erg.sri.com", and expecting them to know that the FTP host is "sparkyfs.erg.sri.com" is not right. Checking around the DNS seems to indicate a lack of consensus on this. Some sites provide an A record for the domain name, some sites don't. What's the consensus on this list? Please respond directly to me and not to the list, and I'll summarize the results to the list in a week or so. Dave Curry SRI International
Craig_Everhart@TRANSARC.COM (10/24/90)
I've been recommending (to anyone who wants my opinions) that if you send mail with, say, a From: line of foo@bar.baz.ola, then there should be some machine somewhere named bar.baz.ola (yes, with an A record) so that old-timers can still get mail to you. The andrew.cmu.edu setup is a reasonable example. There are three machines advertised via MX as being recipients for andrew.cmu.edu mail, and the andrew.cmu.edu machine itself has the least-favored status in MX-land. (The other two machines, po2.andrew.cmu.edu and po3.andrew.cmu.edu, each are more preferred MX recipients for andrew.cmu.edu. And all mail from the domain goes out as From: local-part@andrew.cmu.edu .) It's been interesting, watching the volume of incoming mail shift, over the years, from the andrew.cmu.edu machine itself to the other two big MX in-vectors. Of course, providing a machine named bar.baz.ola (and an address record) solves not only the problem of non-MX mailers, but also the problem of where to connect for FTP and finger and other services. Craig
mrs@mx.csun.edu (Mike Stump) (10/24/90)
In article <9010231539.AA06606@quetzalcoatl.erg.sri.com> davy@erg.sri.com writes: > >Here's a philosophical question: > > Should there be an A record for a domain name itself? > >For example, our domain name is erg.sri.com. You can send mail to >"user@erg.sri.com" since there's an MX record, but you can't say "ftp >erg.sri.com", since there's no A record. You have to FTP to a >specific host. Here is a simple question, Do you want ``finger you@subdomain.domain.com'' to work? I do. For it to work, there needs to be an A record. -- If I can get mail to you via a legally registered fully qualified domain name, you could be on Saturn for all I care. -- quote by Bob Sutterfield <bob@MorningStar.Com>