Talk:Domain Name System/Draft

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This article is developing nicely. Thanks to those who have contributed. I think it would benefit from an overview or introduction which briefly explains what DNS is, when it was first rolled out, etc., for those who are not yet familiar with the technology. After all, DNS is a function largely hidden from many computer users who do not delve into the details of how networks are implemented, so even some savvy computer scientists might not know much about it. I appreciate what has been done so far; keep up the good work!Pat Palmer

Thanks, Pat. While I'm more a subspecialist in routing than DNS, I'm certainly comfortable with it, but for some reason, this is a painful article to write.

When you speak of the introduction, are you including some of the business and political issues, very important in absolutely current policy meetings, that are dealing with matters such as the creation of a large number of new top level domains? There is a very real collision between the original technical purpose of DNS, and business issues it was never designed to address. To some extent, there are people in business that are trying to coerce the DNS to be a search engine, which doesn't work well both from the technical and intellectual property/trademark law areas. Howard C. Berkowitz 15:42, 5 July 2008 (CDT)

I think I'd put the discussion of today's politics in a special section. For the intro, I was thinking of describing, for the youngsters who might not remember, what a big innovation DNS initially was--translating raw IP addresses into user-friendly domain names, and vice versa. Also worth mentioning, I think, is how the entire internet managed to cut over to the use of DNS all at once in, was it '83? Only after describing what is is, and how important is was and is, would I go into all the technical details, the stuff that you are very expert in. This is becoming a great article; keep it up!Pat Palmer 18:46, 5 July 2008 (CDT)