Linking to numeric IP addresses vs. alpha in URLS

[JQ Johnson]

--Stacy Paber asks about using IP addresses rather than domain names in
HTML links:

> when the Extranet is 
> up and the campus Internet connection is down, we aren't always able to 
> access the Extranet sites.

I strongly dislike the idea of hardcoding IP addresses for any hosts
outside your own administrative control.  My experience is that they do in
fact change frequently and that the outside world (you) is typically not
notified of topology or server changes because the assumption is that
people find hosts by their names not their addresses.

The basic problem here is that the library's Internet connection is being
lost.  THAT's what needs to be fixed. 

If that can't be fixed, then the next step is to question whether in fact
the Extranet provides "more stability".  As this discussion makes clear,
connections consist not just of a bit pipe, but of the network services
needed to support and manage that pipe; I'd say that the extranet provider
has failed in his (hopefully contractual) obligations by not providing DNS
service or transit routing to the Internet.

Stacy notes that the library is already running a local name server, but
that it doesn't cache.  Presumably, since Stacy doesn't complain about
access to local resources, it's successfully set as the preferred server
for library machines (in hardwired IP configurations or in DHCP responses).
One could convert it to a caching server or make it a secondary for the
zones covering the extranet resources.  Such a change would be easy if it's
bind on Unix/Linux; I have less recent experience with other major name
server implementations.

Bob Jones suggests setting up a second name server.  That's a cheap
approach if you have some Unix expertise in your organization, but it begs
some questions of how this server will get its non-authoritative
information, and how your workstations will know enough to ask it for the
right information.  Given the apparent fragility of the present setup, I'd
advise getting some more in-depth network engineering consulting before
proceeding.

JQ Johnson                     office: 115F Knight Library
Academic Education Coordinator phone: 1-541-346-1746 v, -3485 fax
1299 University of Oregon      mailto:jqj at darkwing.uoregon.edu
Eugene, OR  97403-1299         http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~jqj/