Subject: RE: Now: Next Generation Domains and DNS -- Was: Re: No More Cent ral Authority: Not NSI/ICAN! Not ORSC!

From: Francois Menard Distribution List Management Account <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1999 07:12:43 -0500

An Idea that has stuck in my mind since Christian Huitema pointed this out
in the San-Jose IETF,

What about dynamic resolution based on trusts of "namespace ownership
claims" ?

I trust more www.ford.com (which I already trust) to trust that
www.mercury.com is the authoritative site than that site operated by
www.istealdnsnamesforaliving.com which claims to sell mercury cars.

The resolver, which is the complex piece of code that you do not want to
make ultra-complicated for small systems, could defer this election process
to a DNS server.  Of course, this would make the DNS server a bit
client/server, but nonetheless, we could find scalability in this.  Maybe
not for www.sex.com, but certainly not 600 people will begin to claim
ownership of www.ietf.org ...

This seems like a nice way to extend the concept of trusts in public key
cryptography.

Surely this has already been debated ?

-=Francois=-

---

From: Francois Menard <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1999 11:34:19 -0500

I dont think that claim-based ownership of a certain subset of the global
domain name namespace has anything to do with being a crazy concept.  This
seems to me to be the only alternative to a centralized directory or
replicated namespace lists (anyone remembers the nodelist on FidoNet?)

It seems to me perfectly possible to design a second hierarchy of "rogue"
"root" name servers that collaborate with the official servers maintained by
the Internic and design some kind of trust-based relationship between
queries and answers to queries.   Lets say that out of a hundred trust
points, the internic servers always win.  There is certainly a way to have
DNS servers return a all IP addresses that claim to host the ietf.org DNS
name and sort them in a preference order that matches some trust criterias.
My technical issues has to do with whether or not the equivalent of process
can be distributed without increasing significantly the resolver code on
each DNS client.

-=Francois=-

> ----- Original Message -----
> From:	Randy Bush [SMTP:[email-masked]]
> Sent:	Tuesday, January 26, 1999, 10:57:23
> To:	[email-masked]
> Cc:	Francois Menard; IETF
> Subject:	Re: Now: Next Generation Domains and DNS -- Was: Re: No More

> Cent ral Authority: Not NSI/ICAN! Not ORSC! 
> 
> >  *you* might trust 'ford.com' to be authoritative for 'mercury.com'.
> 
> i certainly would not.  what does ford know about chemical/metal supplies?
> <grin>
> 
> this discussion lacks a certain basis in reality.  or maybe i just don't
> understand it because it's origins were from the crazies from which 

I dont think my email address is in your procmail list

-=Francois=-

> procmail
> protects me.
> 
> randy
> ----- End Of Original Message -----

---

From: Francois Menard <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1999 11:34:19 -0500

-=Francois=-

-=Francois=-