David Conrad wrote on 2022-08-13 18:55:
Paul,
On Aug 13, 2022, at 3:32 PM, Paul Vixie <[email protected]>
wrote:
i suggest that we adopt the technology "domain names (which is a concept that
precedes DNS itself)" whenever we are trying to talk about the name space as
distinct from the protocol.
Sorry, which technology are you suggesting we adopt? Or did you get
auto-corrected from “terminology”?
oops. yes.
ideally the domain name system would have left a carve-out for domain names that were not
expected to be served through the first such "domain name system", but were
rather reserved for future domain name systems.
The domain name namespace (labels separated by dots) is obviously agnostic to
how it is implemented. The problem isn’t that parts of the namespace can’t be
reserved: anything can be reserved for anything, regardless of protocol (see
.ONION or .LOCAL). The problem is that every resolver implementation and
deployment on the Internet, which assumes anything that looks like a domain
name IS intended for the DNS, has to be modified to “do something different”
when it sees that reservation and failure to do so mean the name is going to be
looked up via the DNS.
that's a problem for future innovators. many resolvers look for
domain-style names in other places than DNS (/etc/hosts, YP, etc). i
think the point of a carve-out is to let people try things. how those
people get broad adoption for their ideas is not the IETF's immediate
concern.
by camping onto the whole of the domain name space, DNS (the domain name
system) has blocked research into new naming systems.
It didn’t block research into overloading the domain name namespace into
protocols other than DNS (as Onion, mDNS, GNS, Namecoin, Handshake, Butterfly,
etc., all demonstrate), it made it unscalable because of conventions of
operating system vendors and application developers and assumptions of users.
if by unscalable you include the idea that if someone experiments with
.XXX they run the risk of having IANA later allocate that to some unique
purpose, then i agree with your use of that word.
warren's .ALT proposal can begin to undo that harm. internet standards should
describe roads not walls. i am no fan of blockchain naming, but i'd like those
systems to reach the market rather than be prevented from doing so.
Just to be clear: you believe folks like Handshake, Butterfly, Unstoppable
Domains, etc., will be willing to be ghettoized into .ALT (or other)? And you
also believe this will allow the use of (say) UD.ALT or HANDSHAKE.ALT to
address the markets they’re trying to address? I’m not against moving forward
with .ALT, but I’ll admit some skepticism that it will work as intended: it
feels to me that it’s more an exercise in “if you build it, they will come” but
without James Earl Jones.
i think GNU would use it. others can decide what to do. the worst case
risk is low, the best case benefit is high. so, to be clear, "yes".
As John Levine points out, this isn’t a technology issue: it is
social/politica/economic/bureaucratic. ...
i'm aware of legal matters which could pertain, but i am not IETF's
lawyer so will not seek to advise them. what matters as an engineering
question is that the domain name system camps onto the whole of the
domain-style / hierarchical / structure space of names, and this was an
error, and a carve-out is needed to facilitate innovation.
Regards,
-drc
yours always,
--
P Vixie
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