So this week, I launched www.6o.to. This is a URL shortener. Yes, I know that there are *many* services just like this on the internet… or are there? What makes 6o.to special is that it is based on the DNS infrastructure, and an active implementation of a Draft IETF specification I published last year.
Quite simply, the URLs are stored in TXT records via DNS. This means that websites could look these up not by a complex API, but via standard DNS. Of course, this doesn’t exclude *also* having a complex API, but DNS allows for some really cool things.
For instance, one brilliant result of using DNS is the ability to cache content. Individual sites such as universities or large organizations could utilize their existing DNS infrastructure to reduce the effect of numerous redirects, by providing their own internal redirection service.
I realize that the advantages of this new service are highly targeted towards those providing IT infrastructure, rather than the end-user adopting the service. Much of the forward development of this service will be to provide features that the end-user will rave over… stay tuned?
