Re: New ip-up
jeff@localhost.debian.org (Jeff Sheinberg) wrote on 20.10.97 in <[🔎] m0xNSyS-000SqCC@localhost>:
> 6) Is there anything wrong with a host name of `localhost'? I tried to
Well, it won't be useful information for anybody else.
> I tried looking at the Host Requirements RFCs 1122, 1123, and 1127,
> but all I found was mention that RFC 822 deprecates the use of
> hostnames that are not fully qualified. So, does anyone know what
> the hostname of a dial-up connection with dynamic ip address should be?
There is no rule for hostnames. There are rules for names you show to
other people, which are often (but not necessarily) copied from the
hostname. Usually, they say that these names must be useful, which means
they have to lead to the right type of DNS record for whatever people will
want to do with it.
There are two important rules here - for anything needing an IP address,
you want to find an A record, and for mail, you want to find an MX record.
Oh, and for those needing A records, you can often just give the naked IP
address.
So: localhost is pretty useless, as on most machines this is resolved to
127.0.0.1. The PTR record for the IP address helps for some applications
(for dynamic IP, it's usually something like ppp123.pool17.provider.com),
at least when whoever controls these has set them up correctly, but
whenever you need something more permanent (like in mail), you want to use
a different address - whatever will make that mail get back to you. Your
ISP will usually tell you what works with him.
I have two very different possible connections to the 'net:
1. I can connect to muenster.de via PPP. I will get an address assigned
that carries a hostname like icini-ppp-i1.muenster.de, and I an use an
email address like exampleuser@muenster.de (I don't use that mailbox, but
I connect to them a lot because they have a local Debian mirror).
2. I can connect to westfalen.de via SLIP. I will get a fixed IP address
that maps to khms.westfalen.de, and I can (and do) use all usernames of
the form exampleuser@khms.westfalen.de that I can think of.
Obviously, for me, it's best to use khms.westfalen.de for all mail and
whenever the name will not be needed for immediate connections back to me,
even while using muenster.de. The muenster.de addresses I use only when I
absolutely have to - like when I'm trying to open a ftp connection on my
machine from master.
MfG Kai
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