On Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 3:11 PM, Ted Smith <[email protected]> wrote: > >> http://1231231231.onion/ because the http URL spec requires DNS >> resolution there. One would need to a number >> of onion schemes otherwise. > > Tor has its own lookup protocol for .onion names. The name in > <name>.onion is actually the hash of a Tor hidden service identifier > key. You can't resolve .onion addresses via DNS, because they don't have > IP addresses, because they're _hidden_ services.
For those who are wondering how this actually works, the answer lies in the fact that Tor exposes the API of a SOCKS5 proxy to the browser, and the browser relies on the SOCKS5 proxy to do the DNS resolution work. The fact that Tor does no such thing, but instead performs a different kind of lookup and makes a different connection entirely, is invisible to the browser. This is generally a good strategy which could be emulated by anyone wanting to implement alternate naming/routing schemes side-by-side with DNS/IP: make your 'names' look like DNS names, so they work in normal URLs/browsers and then make magic happen in a proxy layer. (I didn't get any responses to my lapcat mail from a few weeks back, but lapcat is basically an experiment along these lines, allowing me to connect to different names using different strategies.) -- Bjarni R. Einarsson Founder, lead developer of PageKite. Make localhost servers visible to the world: http://pagekite.net/ _______________________________________________ Freedombox-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss
