zlacker

> Because I kept reading about why DNS was created and always encountered the same parroted explanation, year after year. Something along the lines that IP addresses were constantly in flux. That may have been true when DNS was created and the www was young.

Interesting! That runs in direct conflict to what I learned eons ago (pre-web) for "why DNS?". (Or maybe, it conflicts with what my faulty meat brain remembers.)

The gist was "we have DNS because without it, people would have use numbers. people don't like numbers." DNS is primarily there to provide semantic meaning". The fact that it allows the numbers to change is.. a secondary bonus.

DNS exists for the same reason as variable names instead "variable numbers" (like a, b, c, d, &c) For us humans to provide semantic labels to things.

(an aside, "variable number" is exactly how things are still done in math and physics. This amuses me greatly.)

>>loxias+(OP)
I did not study computer science so anything I know I learned from reading what was available in textbooks and on the internet itself. I learned DNS exists because the number of hosts was growing too quickly to keep updating a HOSTS file. The HOSTS file permits me to assign semantic meaning, i.e., names, to IP numbers. I can name hosts however I choose, and in practice I still do, because I like very short names. A simple analogy perhaps might be assigning names, images, sounds, etc. to different stored contact numbers on a mobile phone. The owner of the phone can control the semantic meaning assigned to the number, rather than delegating all control over this to someone else.

DNS, as I see it, lets someone else assign the names, i.e., the semantic meaning. Thus, assuming I am an internet user in the pre-DNS era, with the advent of DNS, I do not have to keep updating a HOSTS file when new hosts come online or change their address. This reduces administrative burden. The semantic meaning was already controllable pre-DNS, via the HOSTS file.

Many times I have read the criticisms of IP addresses as justifications for DNS. For example, IP addresses are (a) difficult to type or (b) difficult to remember. I simply cannot agree with such criticisms. As time goes on, and the www gets continually more nonsensically abstracted, I like IP addresses more and more.

>>loxias+(OP)
> The gist was "we have DNS because without it, people would have use numbers. people don't like numbers." DNS is primarily there to provide semantic meaning". The fact that it allows the numbers to change is.. a secondary bonus.

This is before i was born, but that sounds more like the reason why /etc/hosts was invented, which predates dns.

>>loxias+(OP)
> an aside, "variable number" is exactly how things are still done in math and physics. This amuses me greatly.

Variable names are usually idiomatic within a field/carry some semantics. e.g. k is angular wavenumber, omega is angular frequency. r is displacement. etc. They just use short names to prevent the name from distracting from the shape of the equations it's used in, so that it's easier to say things like "this behaves like a transport equation but with a source term that's proportional to the strength of the Foo field squared" or whatever.

Lots of phenomena have very similar governing equations, so downplaying the names of variables in favor of the structure/context they're used in allows for efficient transfer of intuition.