On Sun, Jul 24, 2011 at 09:02:59PM +0200, Iñaki Baz Castillo wrote: > 2011/7/24 Willy Tarreau <w@xxxxxx>: > > But that's not what I meant, I meant that DNS is not the only solution > > to resolve host names. WINS, NIS and /etc/hosts are usable too. When I > > was a student in 94, we had all our passwords and hostnames in NIS and > > no DNS was configured. It worked like a charm. DNS is not something > > mandatory at all for many protocols. It just happens to be the standard > > over the public Internet. > > Ok, I get your point now :) > But, do current webbrosers resolve names using anything but DNS A? > (well, I know that they use /etc/hosts). Anyhow, WINS / NIS /etc/hosts > and such stuff just maps a hostname into a single IP. It's the > equivalent of a DNS A resource record. Think about locating a mail > server (MX is required), you need a DNS server. ... or a static entry (the "Smart Relay host" entry you see in on the DS line in sendmail.cf). That's the case of any mail client in a campus, they don't use DNS to send outgoing mail. And even within the mail relays and servers, it's quite common to have a relaydomains file to map domains to servers. Willy _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf