Open Stack

On 2013-06-10 13:30:26 +0000 (+0000), Mac Innes, Kiall wrote:
[...]
> DNS on the other hand is about deciding where to send those bits
[...]

And even that is a very understated description, focusing on
network-related applications of DNS. As a global, distributed,
hierarchical database (with cryptographically-authenticated
results now thanks to DNSSEC) there are numerous
non-network-specific uses for DNS which take advantage of those
other properties.

Going back before the dawn of the service, the ARPANET host table
included cputype and opsys metadata (fields 4 and 5 described in RFC
810), ultimately ported in RFC 823 as the HINFO RR. This was
arguably somewhat network-related since the stated use case was for
identifying FTP behavior differences, but paved the way for
publishing all sorts of other data in the DNS. These days
applications publish and query arbitrary key and signature blocks,
enforcement policy data, notifications, and even embed other
protocols in or tunnel them through the DNS.
-- 
Jeremy Stanley