In the beginning...
Systems used host tables for name to address translation
When size of the Internet grew to about 1000 hosts in 1984, it became obvious that host tables would not scale well as the Internet continued to grow
All hosts need to have their host tables updated when hosts are added or removed
Notes:
Host tables meant that *ALL* hosts had to be entereed and updted by the InterNIC. Central management and maintenance would cause delays in getting information updated and distributed.
A master copy of the Internet host tables was available via FTP. However, significant bandwidth was consumed by hosts trying to get their copy each night