[MOBY-dev] [moby] question for moby devs/architects regarding use of DNS

[Mark Wilkinson]

On Wed, 2006-11-29 at 09:20 -0500, Chris Dagdigian wrote:

> to the main open-bio.org web/DNS/mailserver. We are talking about 256 
> + simultaneous TCP sessions heading our way from the same remote IP  
> address.

I guess the first question is "which IP address?" :-)



> (1) In the way that moby is architected is it expected that either  
> clients or servers would generate lots of DNS traffic for  
> biomoby.org? If what I am seeing is 'normal' then I just want to  
> leave things alone.

We run a cron'd script from our server here that tests all services in
the registry every hour.  I don't know for certain if this is using LSID
resolution as part of that task (Eddie, can you confirm?), but it
wouldn't surprise me if that were the case.  


> (2) How popular is LSID? Could services making use of the 'lsid' SVR  
> record be responsible for lots of DNS traffic? LIke 256+ sessions   
> from the same IP?


We are increasingly using the LSID to represent *all* entities in MOBY -
datatypes, service types, web service instances, etc.  A tool like
Taverna may well be resolving all LSIDs in the MOBY registry each time
it starts-up (?), which could account for the traffic.  Other client
applications will likely use LSID resolution in the same way in the near
future, if they don't already.  Again, the IP address would fairly
quickly tell us whether these are "scientists" or "scriptkiddies".  

Regardless, the use of LSIDs in MOBY is only going to increase over
time, so if it is becoming an issue now we should think about how to
manage it before it becomes a real problem...



> (3) I am going to reconfigure the DNS server so that we don't  
> recursively answer DNS requests for other domains (like 'cnn.com'  
> etc.) while still allowing anyone in the world to query the  
> biomoby.org DNS zone.  Can the moby developers/leaders elect a point  
> person that I can remain in contact with while we do this work?

Eddie Kawas:  ed.kawas at gmail.com

I'm in the lab until tomorrow, and then away for about 10 days in
Germany, so he's the one who will answer your questions most rapidly.


>  I  
> want to make sure that we don't affect/break moby services while this  
> work is done.

:-)  thanks Chris!

Best wishes, 

M

-- 
Mark Wilkinson
Asst. Professor, Dept. of Medical Genetics
University of British Columbia
PI in Bioinformatics, iCAPTURE Centre
St. Paul's Hospital, Rm. 166, 1081 Burrard St.
Vancouver, BC, V6Z 1Y6
tel: 604 682 2344 x62129
fax: 604 806 9274

"Scientists would rather share their toothbrush than their data"
                                        - Carole Goble

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