Mark Hughes wrote:

> > The DNS is NOT a Directory Service.
>
> The DNS as a whole is not a directory service.  The existing gTLDs are not a
> directory service.  The .au namespace and none of the .au 2LDs are a
> directory service.

None of the DNS is a directory service, and there is no point in even trying to
make portions of it look like one.
The DNS maps text names to IP addresses. Period.
The advent of GUIs and search engines/classified list sites provide much more
powerful and more granular access - they map 'single mouse clicks' to IP
addresses and right down to the individual resources (pages in the most part,
pictures, movies, forms, etc) stored somewhere at that IP address. The utility
of using these as a 'directory service' so exceeds guessing or algorithmicly
determining DNS names its just not funny.

> But its quite possible to create a subset of the DNS that works really well
> as a directory service.  All it requires is to create a part of the DNS -
> say, a new .au 2LD - in which:

To use an old analogy,  you're proposing a new method of making buggy whips,
while the rest of the world is improving the automobile.


> For example, one could create .phn.au and assign domain names that equal
> existing phone numbers - e.g. 0212345678.phn.au. so that if you knew
> someone's phone number you could enter that and be directed to their web
> site.

or even a global .phn domain, and have 61212345678.phn, inserting the country
code - but again, this is making incremental modifications to something that is
already way obsolete. Why would I (a) as a target, go to all the trouble of
keeping possibly thousands of numbers up to date pointing to my top-level
homepage, and the nightmare when I change numbers, or (b) as a user, bother
typing all this in, when if a user already knows the number, they know the name
they are expecting to reach at that number, and can go CLICK (type one or two
name keywords) CLICK CLICK and go straight into the deep bowels of the site to
the exact information page they were looking for, based on a long verbose text
description/summary?

soapbox off, time for shuteye for this little black duck.
.
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