Distributed Name Server

[kun chung]

Space Flight Operations Center (SFOC) baseline team here at JPL came up with
a project-independent ground data processing/communications facility.  In this
picture many computers (perhaps a few hundreds) are inter-connected by
Ethernets.  Some link-layer and IP-layer bridges are also present to distribute
and select the data flow.

In this picture there are many servers.  In order to relate a server name with
an internet address and a port number, convensionally we have maintained a
static file table.  Each node must maintain this static file table.  It will
be very difficult to maintain all these on some two hundred nodes.

My job is to provide a distributed name server, which automates this task.
We came up with a few ideas:

	- Each node maintains its server tables.
	- The requests for a server information is broadcasted.
	- Each node has a name server which listen to the broadcast requests
	  and returns the corresponding internet address and port number.
	- When LAN is separated by a IP-layer bridge, a broadcast server is
	  created to send the broadcast requests.

Has anyone encountered a similar problem and actually implemented it in some
way ?  Or does anyone have better ideas/suggestions ?

I will appreciate your inputs.  Thanks.

-- 
Min Chung
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Uucp: {sdcrdcf,bellcore,ihnp4}!psivax!jplpro!min
Uucp: jplgodo!chas2!jplpro!min
Arpa: ...jplpro!min at cit-vax.ARPA