Hey Frob, all. Been kicking this concept around my head for a while, but never really thought about it seriously. Interested in taking it further and seeing what can be done with it though. Practical usage aside (a separate issue), here are some technical comments...
Frob the Builder wrote: > FUCANN > Fully Un-Centalized Authority for Naming and Numbers (*) > Rev 1.0 [...] > Users' FU Root Server list "froots.txt" contains lists of URLs. The > URLs point to "fhosts.txt" files which are in the format of the > standard "hosts" file, i.e., > 12.34.56.78 foo.bar > Note that fhosts.txt files can override even government names, e.g., > 12.34.56.79 amazon.com > because the hosts file (into which they are merged) is consulted first. This is fine if you assume a one-to-one mapping of the original domain names to IP addresses. The problem comes when the server a domain points to is the map for several domains, say via Virtual Hosts or selected forwarding. Many servers use this if they're on a dedicated web-hoster, or for subdomains. Without the ability to differentiate between the intended sites, the practicality of fucann becomes significantly impaired, if based solely on clients' hosts files. > Anyone can be a FU Root Server and there is no global conflict > resolution. The end-user performs conflict resolution when he orders > the name of Root Servers in his local "froots.txt" file. Conflict resolution is fine, but in rev 1.0, revolution conflict is introduced instead: If 2 of the sources in your froots.txt file contain 2 of the same host entries (but for different mappings) and you want one from one and one from the other, then more advanced conflict sorting is needed, perhaps from within a simple client for the purpose... However, I'd be interested in experimenting with the idea, and have installed the various win32 ports, host-editing bat files, and set up My First Fhost File... If anyone fancies discussing this further, get in touch... .g -- "Rather than form a federation with Microsoft and work with what we had already created, there was this notion that the world should be offered an alternative" - Craig "MS CTO" Mundie
