Re: renumbering and roaming

["Michael S. Fischer" <otterley () iPass COM>]

In message <Pine.GSO.3.93.980518105250.8122N-100000 () staff uk psi com>, Paul Man
sfield writes:

> On Sun, 17 May 1998, Michael Dillon turned on his computer and typed:
> > On Sun, 17 May 1998, Michael K. Smith:
> >
> > IMHO every dialup customer from every ISP in the world should use
> > 192.168.254.1 for their DNS address and this number should be hard coded
> > as the default in all client software. Then this problem would go away.
>
> if all ISPs agreed to use these addresses... say
>       - TWO resolvers, e.g. 192.168.254,1 and 192.168.253.1
>       - two mail relays, e.g. 192.168.254.5 and 192.168.253.5
>       - two news servers, e.g. ---254.9 and 253.9
>       - two ntp time servers 
>       - etc etc
>
> [the addresses chosen for /30 netmasks, I think that in my Monday morning
> brain-state I got it right?]
>
> And so on for "standard" services, then we could achieve global roaming SO
> easily.
>
> The number of times we've had customers roam elsewhere and then try
> and use ou r mail relays when for spam reasons relaying is denied...

After several discussions, we came up with this solution that we think 
works well to support standard services for roaming users:

Support a .local. root domain in your DNS servers.  Examples of DNS
hostnames would be mail.local., ntp.local., news.local., etc.  When a
roamer dials up he generally uses the DNS servers assigned by the NAS;
these addresses would be authoritative on a provider-by-provider
basis.  If all networks supported this schema all users could simply
have these addresses coded into their client software and would
connect to the proper machines as they differ on various networks.

iPass is currently building an Internet-Draft specifying the details
of this approach.  What do you think?

--Michael

                 Michael S. Fischer <otterley () iPass COM>            
 |\           Sr. Systems/Network Administrator,  iPass Inc.          _O_ 
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