> If we intend making this truely international (as any good free software
> project should be) there will be problems with a fixed time update.
> Updating the database is probably something you want to do at low usage
> times. Since this will very depending on the location of the server, a
> timestamp based method would be preferred here.
I agree, internationalization should be considered. I've seen mention of
Unicode for the format, I don't have a problem with that.
The servers would be able to choose a time to receive updates. This makes
it so that only one server needs to get updates from a root server for a
given region. For example, if the root server were in the US, it could
send updates at a time good for the mirror in the UK, Germany, etc. And
other servers on that side of the pond can connect there in the off-peak
times. This keeps the load down for everyone and conserves trans-atlantic
bandwidth. ;)
> We should be careful with any plan requiring a root server. If we design
> for some cannonical reference database, far to much authority is placed
> in the hands of that maintainers of that machine. While it should be
> possible to design the system so that changing over to a new root server
> is as painless as possible, the need to do so would already be
> considerable inconvience.
>
> The alternative to to avoid having an authoritive root server at all and
> take the decentralised route (as done in news distribution, et al.) The
> major objections to this method is the slow propagation time for new additions
> and consequently the much increased risk of multiple entries (which may not
> neccessarily be a bad thing, especially if some voting strategy is used to
> decide on the correct information.)
I agree that it would be nice to have a more decentralized plan. I just
haven't thought up a good one yet. The method I outlined is much like DNS,
and that seems quite reliable. And some were even sugesting using DNS
itself as the database. A voting strategy for duplicates would be a good
idea, IMO.
Travis Tabbal