[Asterisk-Users] Re: DNS SRV records

[Aaron J. Angel]

Darren Edmundson wrote:
>
> On Wed, 9 Jun 2004, Duane wrote:
> > How's it a DNS "hack" when the SRV record includes the A record????
> 
> Because you're having to create subdoms and use them for your 
> SIP addresses,

This is not a hack, this is standard DNS practice.  The same is done for a
lot of services, including the web, ftp, gopher, ...creating domains with A
records and using them for addresses has been standard for quite some time,
and I don't think that will change very soon.

> rather than using the facilities that SIP 
> provides to allow you to use your domain

You mean the facilities that DNS provides?  SRV records?  Hrm...last I
checked, STD 1 listed DNS SRV, SIP, and of particular note, the RFC that
describes how to use SRV for SIP, as "Proposed Standard".  With that in
mind, I hardly think it wise to shove it in everyone's faces and start a
debate on whether or not all should rely on SRV records for SIP.  The answer
quite is quite obvious -- if you want to be compatible and follow standards,
relying of DNS SRV is definitely not the way to go, yet.

At this point, any SIP service provider that *relies* on addresses using SRV
records should be chastized.  The fact is it's probably not even supported
(or enabled by default, for reasons mentioned above) in all softphones yet
(yet alone all hardphones).  Even in Asterisk last I checked, the feature
was still experimental.

I imagine something very similar happened when MX records were invented.  So
quite your whining and bashing and deal with what the Internet community has
chosen until it changes.  If anyone wishes to deploy SRV records, fine.  I
would encourage it -- it's easy to do while still maintaining backwards
compatability.

But if you wish to *rely* on them, you're on your own, and don't come back
whining because no one else is using them and you suddenly aren't so popular
on the phone, because it's not yet a published standard.