[Pkg-utopia-maintainers] Bug#466014: mdns4 vs. mdns

[Ted Percival]

> > > Please replace mdns4_minimal and mdns4 by, respectively,
> > > mdns_minimal and mdns by default in /etc/nsswitch.conf.
> > 
> > No, don't!
> 
> Why is that ?

I think the answer is in bug 388864, comment #20 (http://bugs.debian.org/388864#20):

> Because many broken programs (one of
> them being "telnet") do host name lookups in a broken way: they first
> try an ipv6 lookup and if that fails fall back to ipv4. In mDNS host
> name lookups for nonexistant host names take a long time to
> timeout.

People *do* complain when their apps become mysteriously slow at
connecting. Based on the deployed base of IPv6, I think the current
balance is that it is better to disable IPv6 lookups by default.

If this is a barrier to IPv6 adoption in itself, then perhaps
someone would be willing to start a strike force to get these
broken applications fixed. I expect one could find potential
troublemakers with some greps of the Debian archive (eg.
bad use of gethostbyname).
</tangent>

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