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List:       kfm-devel
Subject:    Fwd: SRV support in konqueror ?
From:       David Faure <david () mandrakesoft ! com>
Date:       2001-07-24 15:45:40
[Download RAW message or body]

Can someone answer this ? I have no clue about this stuff.

----- Forwarded message from Peter Håkanson <peter@ipsec.nu> -----

Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 14:40:10 +0200 (CEST)
From: Peter Håkanson <peter@ipsec.nu>
To: faure@kde.org
Subject: SRV support in konqueror ?

Hi,

I hope i address the right person here, but i would like
an added feature in konqueror, namely the ability to 
examine and follow DNS SRV records.

SRV records are a new feature in DNS that makes it possible
to locate "services" in the same way as "MX" records deals 
with mail addresses.

Until SRV records were defined no way existed to tell which 
port a server application used. Thus all servers had to reside
on the IANA-defined port.

With SRV records the intention is that an application that
wishes to reach a server should ask DNS for a "SRV" first,
if it founds one use the server and port given to connect. If
none is foundm it will ask for "A" ( or usually "ANY" and 
follow "CNAME" or "A" records found.

SRV records would be just perfect for http, the reson is that
one often wants several "logical" servers in the same machine.
Previously this was achieved by useing several ip-addresses and
having (apache) listen on the indivitual addresses. To reduce
the need for addresses url-based mechanisms was designed, 
but the problems were several.

SRV on the other hand would deal with this in a better way, the general 
format is 
<key> IN  SRV  <prio> <weight> <port> <domain-name-of-server>

So a webserver is described not only which port to be used, 
but also a way of describing several servers, who's order
to be contacted is definedm and a crude way of load-balancing
( broken in my opinion) is defined + the servers domain name.

The key is built up with a special way , assume you want to
reach www.ipsec.nu , then the key is :
_http._tcp.www.ipsec.nu

Any SRV record found for that record will describe not only
which server(s) but also at which ports to use.

Thus a webserver for 100 domains need only one ip-address, but
has a server on 100 different ports.

Why is this not used today ? Well no browser to my knowledege
has the ability do do this. Thus no web-owner cares about
SRV. Someone has to start. I think the KDE project would
be an excellent starting point ( "the only modern browser" ) 

I have prepared SRV records for www.ipsec.nu ( and www.ipsec.se)
for testing purposes ( they point to my ordinary server, but
that could be adjusted)

Now, if i want SRV records, why don't i grab the source ? Well
i have i freebsd 4.3 system where i can do this. I am however
an amatour with c++ and not really confident. I'll try anyway.
If i get it working, how do i contribute the result ?

Now, is there any interest from the KDE project ? I can 
contribute with DNS knowledge ( this is my living), but i
am not shure that i can modifu the source as you your 
standards.

Regards


--  
-- quote of the week 
        There's never money to do it right, but always money to do it
	again ... and again ... and again ... and again.

=========================================================================
Peter Håkanson            Phone     +46707328101       Fax +4631223190
IPSec sverige                Email      peter@ipsec.nu  
"Safe by design"             Address    Bror Nilssons gata 16  Lundbystrand
                                        S-417 55  Gothenburg   Sweden         

----- End forwarded message -----

-- 
David FAURE
david@mandrakesoft.com, faure@kde.org
http://home.clara.net/faure/, http://www.konqueror.org/
KDE, Making The Future of Computing Available Today

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