4 ms·
Wouldn't it be better to tie a phone number to an email address? An email address is still much more memorable than a phone number but the crowded namespace iss
by phpnode 17y ago
Wouldn't it be better to tie a phone number to an email address? An email address is still much more memorable than a phone number but the crowded namespace issue has already been solved. You could add something similar to an MX record to your domain's DNS that specifies where your "phone number server" is. The phone number server would be a simple database of username/alias and "real" phone number (although it could be expanded to do redirects, voicemail, 404s etc). The client making the call then consults this server which returns the number that it should dial.
"This is pretty cool because it means that anything that can speak DNS (pretty much everything) could have programmatic access to this data."
I don't think this offers an advantage over my solution, as any application that needs to use this will have to be modified anyway, the protocol I'm proposing would be equally trivial (or not) to implement.
- wibblenut 17y agoUsing an e-mail address as your identifier kind of defeats the purpose. Google's webfinger takes this approach, using TXT records to map your email address to an XRD document. But this adds a lot more complexity and means doing an extra HTTP request - so now it's much slower than a single DNS query and there's probably a SPoF. Simplicity wins.
- phpnode 17y agoit wouldn't have to be a SPoF, you'd just replicate your server and add an additional record, if the client can't reach the first server it failovers (failsover? fails over?) to the next one. I don't think it adds to the complexity too much and it's hardly going to be slow - it'd be much faster than the time it takes to send even the smallest email message.
- wibblenut 17y agoWell, if you're looking up a name, for example from a dialer on a mobile device, or navigating through some kind of directory service; are you going to be happy hanging around for a HTTP request (or several)? DNS was born to do this; it's lightweight, super fast and wonderfully distributed. :)
- phpnode 17y agoA fraction of a second delay probably wouldn't be noticeable to the end user - you'd only ever lookup the number when actually making the call. DNS may be distributed but that's part of the problem - you can't just set your address to redirect to another number when you're out on lunch - it'd take too long for the changes to propagate through the system. You wouldn't put email addresses at the DNS level, so why do this?
- wibblenut 17y ago>A fraction of a second delay probably wouldn't be noticeable to the end user It is (try it), and retries/outages would be very noticeable. One of the applications I'm particularly interested in is directory services, and as you can imagine browsing through trees is extremely sensitive to responsiveness. Dialing a name should also be near instantaneous. >DNS may be distributed but that's part of the problem - you can't just set your address to redirect to another number when you're out on lunch You can (.tel allows you to switch between "profiles"). >it'd take too long for the changes to propagate through the system. You can set TTLs to whatever you like (60 by default).