RFC 1712 (rfc1712) - Page 1 of 7

DNS Encoding of Geographical Location

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Network Working Group                                         C. Farrell
Request for Comments: 1712                                    M. Schulze
Category: Experimental                                       S. Pleitner
                                                              D. Baldoni
                                         Curtin University of Technology
                                                           November 1994


                 DNS Encoding of Geographical Location

Status of this Memo

   This memo defines an Experimental Protocol for the Internet
   community.  This memo does not specify an Internet standard of any
   kind.  Discussion and suggestions for improvement are requested.
   Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Abstract

   This document defines the format of a new Resource Record (RR) for
   the Domain Naming System (DNS), and reserves a corresponding DNS type
   mnemonic and numerical code.  This definition deals with associating
   geographical host location mappings to host names within a domain.
   The data shown in this document is fictitious and does not
   necessarily reflect the real Internet.

1. Introduction

   It has been a long standing problem to relate IP numbers to
   geographical locations. The availability of Geographical location
   information has immediate applications in network management.  Such
   information can be used to supplement the data already provided by
   utilities such as whois [Har85], traceroute [VJ89], and nslookup
   [UCB89].  The usefulness and functionality of these already widely
   used tools would be greatly enhanced by the provision of reliable
   geographical location information.

   The ideal way to manage and maintain a database of information, such
   as geographical location of internet hosts, is to delegate
   responsibility to local domain administrators. A large distributed
   database could be implemented with a simple mechanism for updating
   the local information.  A query mechanism also has to be available
   for checking local entries, as well as inquiring about data from
   non-local domains.







Farrell, Schulze, Pleitner & Baldoni
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