It's even worse than it appears.
Monday December 16, 2019; 12:02 PM EST
Hover does it right#
  • I want to give the Web Architecture of the Decade award to Hover. They have a hidden feature that changes everything when managing domains, which is what they do.#
  • Here's the feature. They let you put a CNAME where an A record is called for.#
  • In other words you can use a pointer where previously you could only use a hard-coded address. This makes it possible to switch hardware without having to keep track of every DNS-based reference to it. You can point through a pointer. #
  • There's no reason not to do this. Their server is going to respond to every request, so they can do a database lookup to find out what IP address goes with the CNAME and return that. All transparently to the requester.#
  • When someone told me this works, I didn't believe it at first. Now it saves my ass all the time. A feature that every DNS system should support. It's the best kind of feature, it doesn't increase the complexity of the software, and it gives the user more leverage. The rare feature with no tradeoff. #
  • Congrats to Hover and thanks from a happy user. :-)#

© 1994-2019 Dave Winer.

Last update: Monday December 16, 2019; 12:09 PM EST.

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