lynx-dev show IP translations?

[Bela Lubkin]

Ok, another request...

Recently I've noticed that two services I use have a similar problem.
Both have several IP addresses for the same service.  In each case, it
seems that some of the machines delivering the service are out of synch
with the others -- don't have the latest updated information.  The
services are:

  Yahoo messaging         (messages.yahoo.com)
  Island real time quotes (newgritch.island.com/SERVICE/QUOTE?STOCK=ticker)

I wrote a script that uses Lynx to dump yahoo discussion boards.  I
noticed that if I allowed Lynx to lookup messages.yahoo.com each time, I
missed some messages because sometimes it would get an IP address
corresponding to one of the laggard machines.  So I ended up hard-coding
an IP address in my script.

On Island, I notice that if I am watching the behavior of a particular
stock, some reloads will show me an unexpected, completely different
result.  e.g. right now:

  $ for IP in 209.191.149.17 209.191.149.20; do
      echo "==================== $IP ===================="
      lynx -dump -nolist http://$IP/SERVICE/QUOTE?STOCK=SCOC | head -20
    done
  ==================== 209.191.149.17 ====================
  
     refresh  |   island home  |   system stats  |   help
     Island SCOC
     GET STOCK
     _____  go
       _________________________________________________________________
     
     LAST MATCH
     Price 31
     Time 14:36:41
     TODAY'S ACTIVITY
     Orders 502
     Volume 60,890
       _________________________________________________________________
     
     BUY ORDERS
                                                               SHARES PRICE
                                                                  80 30 3/8
                                                                  20 30 1/4
                                                                     100 30
  ==================== 209.191.149.20 ====================
  
     refresh  |   island home  |   system stats  |   help
     Island SCOC
     GET STOCK
     _____  go
       _________________________________________________________________
     
     LAST MATCH
     Price 28 1/8
     Time 9:34:08
     TODAY'S ACTIVITY
     Orders 66
     Volume 458
       _________________________________________________________________
     
     BUY ORDERS
                                                               SHARES PRICE
                                                                      35 28
                                                                      35 28
                                                                     100 28

We can see that the .20 site is out of date.

Similar effects occur with messages.yahoo.com, but I can't seem to
trigger it right now -- they seem to have all machines in sync.

What I'd like is a way to ask Lynx: hey, last time you translated this
hostname, what did you come up with for its IP address?  Or
alternatively (probably better), and internal log of IP translations --
an internal page I could visit, similar to the Visited Links page.  That
way when one member of a multi-host service is flaking out, I can
identify it and stop using it.

=============================================================================

Actually, the more I think about it the more I think it isn't really
Lynx's business.  I should just run `nslookup that.site`, then a little
loop like the above, then pick one IP to use that's behaving well.  And
I should email the maintainer of the site, tell them to reboot that
machine or pull it out of the cluster or whatever it takes.

Other ideas welcome...

>Bela<