[dns-operations] What are the data? [was: After Google Mail, Google Docs, Google Wave... Google DNS]

[Paul Vixie]

> From: "Patrick W. Gilmore" <patrick at ianai.net>
> Date: Mon, 7 Dec 2009 07:29:17 -0500
> 
> What are the _data_?  While name calling on mailing lists is easy and
> fun, it is not data.

see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof> and consider that the
status quo is a phat web farm and load balancer, whereas the benefits of
wide area distribution and the use of dns tricks to pre-route consumers
to one mirror vs another is the thing for which data needs be supplied.
(and i'd want that data to include a comparison to the ibm websphere
approach where the comsumer-specific routing is done with web redirects
rather than with dns.)

> If the real-world, objective, empirical data show a performance or other
> gain, then the algorithm is not "silly", and no number of posts from
> anyone no matter how famous will matter.

akamaized web sites do work better, because of various disciplines applied,
like relative links, w3c compliance, and similar.  (this is my actual
experience.)  but that's not the only benefit claimed by CDN providers.