 |
 |
> From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of > Jonathan Rochkind > Sent: Thursday, April 02, 2009 10:53 AM > To: [log in to unmask] > Subject: [CODE4LIB] points of failure (was Re: [CODE4LIB] resolution > and identification ) > > Isn't there always a single point of failure if you are expecting to be > able to resolve an http URI via the HTTP protocol? > > Whether it's purl.org or not, there's always a single point of failure > on a given http URI that you expect to resolve via HTTP, the entity > operating the web server at the specified address. Right? I think the answer lies in DNS. Even though you have a single DNS name requests could be redirected to one of multiple servers, called a server farm. I believe this is how many large sites, like Google, operate. So even if a single server fails the load balancer sends requests to other servers. Even OCLC does this. > Now, if you have a collection of disparate http URIs, you have _many_ > points of failure in that collection. Any entity goes down or ceases to > exist, and the http URIs that resolved to that entity's web server will > stop working. I think this also gets back to DNS. Even though you have a single DNS name requests could be redirected to servers outside the original request domain. So you could have distributed servers under many different domain names. Andy.