[OpenID] OpenId downtime

[Eric Norman]

On Dec 6, 2007, at 9:29 PM, Martin Fick wrote:

> --- David Recordon <drecordon at sixapart.com> wrote:
>> It seems you already do this today with an email
>> address from
>> yahoo.com.  I could imagine a scenario like email
>> where the majority
>> of OpenID Providers are these very large service
>> providers which
>> already handle services that can't go down.
>
> Ah, but what you seem to be overlooking is how
> they achieve this, they have DNS help!  With MX
> records http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mx_record
> they can specify several servers (and rank them)
> through DNS which allows someone on the other
> side of the globe to spool their email if there
> main servers go down.

You can also have multiple A records (IP numbers)
for a server.  The client is supposed to try 'em all.
This is how redundancy is build into a lot of LDAP
servers.  This is a possibility for URL-based OpenIDs.
I don't know about the XRI critters.

Of course, the downside is that you need more hardware
and have a coordination and synchronization problem
at the OP side.

Eric Norman