you're making a couple of assumptions that might not be valid for all
environments:
a) the dns services available to a user are administered by their
organization
b) the local dns services implement their own caching scheme.
in tommorow's world of dialup/isdn/cable from-the-home internet
connectivity assertion (a) fails. as for (b), many smaller organizations
run pc-based dns servers which generally do not cache, frequently
referring rather than recursing queries.
that said, i would think that it wouldn't be the end of the world if a
client could choose to postpend www hostname resolution results in their
/etc/hosts (or equivalent hosttable store) if said option was enabled.
in fact, some people might think it was nice.
a good place to ask this question might be comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc,
where some of the less powerful hostname resolution schemes are better
understood.
_______________________________________________________________
J. Allard [email protected]
Program Manager of TCP/IP Technologies work: (206)882-8080
Microsoft Corporation home: (206)860-8862