If you want to do a lookup translation and only use names on your local machine, it's only an hour of work or so to create a program that modifies the services file, and then make that program setuid root.
However it only works on your machine.
If you want to have it work on your local machine, DNS SRV records on your local network would work.
The proposal to use names and not numbers breaks down when you want the rest of the world to follow suit, because it's not technically possible within IP, only on top of IP.
> The proposal to use names and not numbers breaks down when you want the rest of the world to follow suit, because it's not technically possible within IP, only on top of IP.
> > The proposal to use names and not numbers breaks down when you want the rest of the world to follow suit, because it's not technically possible within IP, only on top of IP.
> This is exactly my point.
In which case, refer to my original response to your proposal - it's not practical to slow down every networking device in the world by a large factor.
It's like asking "why aren't we commuting at 1/3 the speed of light?": it's neither feasible nor practical.
Sure, it's possible, in that the physics involved make it possible, but not practical, because the limiting factor is not the physics involved.
Surely we can build some protocol on top of IP. I see people mention SRV records. These seem useful, however not very user-friendly at this point, so people don't use them.
However it only works on your machine.
If you want to have it work on your local machine, DNS SRV records on your local network would work.
The proposal to use names and not numbers breaks down when you want the rest of the world to follow suit, because it's not technically possible within IP, only on top of IP.