Name: yw38858 Date: 11/11/99

There are several high-priority bugs in classes_net filed against name
resolution. The core of the problem is that the name resolution code relies on
the platform native nameservice API to resolve names, and different platforms
sometime have different nameservices. By providing a pure Java DNS client, for
those applications that care, they can explicitly request the use of DNS and get
around any platform dependencies.

For now, the caching bugs in the networking code get around the problem by using
an undocumented system property to control caching. The DNS service provider
could be used by the InetAddress class, so that the InetAddress class is not
dependent on platform-specific name resolution code. It could also be used by
the InetAddress to do caching in a way compatible with the TTL settings on the
DNS servers.

Note: This feature is part of the J2SE Reference implementation.
However, it does not add any APIs to the J2SE specification,
is not covered by the TCK, and is not a required part of the
J2SE platform.