On Wed, 14 Mar 2001, Roeland Meyer wrote:
Two points, ICQ has an address manager add-on and my contact manager makes it so I don't have to memorize phone numbers.
And so does any web browser and even all popular e-mail software. The point is: you don't _remember_ e-mail addresses with their FQDNs, you look them up in the address book.
Long-term human memory is much better at names than numbers and is MUCH better at general class names than specific identifiers.
Long-term memory is _much_ better remembering gestalts than precise ASCII strings. I'm exchanging e-mail with my colleague nearly every day, but i can't remember what exactly variant of spelling is used for his name (there's at least sixteen ways to spell his name in English, each as good as any other :).
It has to do with refresh rates, just like DRAM.
It has to do with the way the redundancy is handled in the brain. Long-term potentiation is not a terribly reliable process.
Okay, so you would propose yet another layer of virtualization? Let us count the layers we have already;
1) Layer 2 to IP, used by switches and the like. Services are divorced from IP addrs. Where you route is not where you think you are routing. 2) NAT, Site virtualization. You could renumber the underlayment of the NAT'd space and the outside world will never know ... 3) Straight IP virtualization, used by resonate and F5, as well as local directors, the answering host need never be the same host twice. 4) DNS, separates you from the IP addr layer altogether.
Actually i do not propose any new layers. The "layer" in question exists already, in form of address books, hyperlinks and search engines.
If you put design dates on each of those you will probably find that they are pretty much developed in the order I listed. Each case was to implement a technical solution to a policy issue, in a futile attempt to build technical barricades between the technologist and the politicians. Give it up, you will be assimilated. You have been in retreat for years. You just didn't realize it.
Actally i am not in retreat. I just have a funny habit of doing different things, seeing new things and trying to know what other people are thinking. What i learned so far - if technology aims to change human nature, it fails. It is very naive to assume that brotherhood of technologists will stay cooperative when real money gets in. I do not like it any more than any other techie, but let's face reality. The control of domain name space is passing from technologists to lawyers and politicos.
Speaking of which, your other point about ASCII names is also moot, with iDNS.
iDNS is a crock. A great way to subvert SSL (well, you rely on eyeball recognition of URL; now, with iDNS you may have lots of ways to create identically-looking but _different_ URLs). Though, admittedly, the fault is not in the iDNS idea itself, but in the Unicode. And, yes, you cannot even say if two domain names are the same if one is upper-case, and another lower-case - because conversion depends on language. Next bright idea, please? :)
The real answer was to stop the incursion of trademark crowd into the DNS. You can thank Dave Crocker, Kent Crispin, and their IAHC for that smooth move.
You can't stop them. They are the guys who are making laws. The only way to actually stop them is to organize revolution. Can i opt out? :)
Now if you think that they'd stop just because you have retreated behind yet another layer of abstraction, you are indeed naieve. They will come and hunt you out.
What i am proposing is to remove the contention point. When "names" do not have intrinsic value, nobody'll fight over them. Do you see many scandals around people who own cool IP addresses? :) Now, the lawers will keep hunting trademark violators - but with nothing as tangible as single name, they will have to prove the intent to defraud; for now courts think that just acquiring a well-known brand name (thus depriving "rightful" owner of its use) is an ample proof of such intent.
The inclusive root zone efforts, like that of the ORSC and PacRoot, are actually trying to keep the root intact. We saw the probability of outfits like new.net, years ago. We also recognised what it meant.
It means that the ICANN soapbox is only fine because Microsoft has bigger fish to catch. Now imagine they ship an OS with a resolver with "additional" functionality - conviniently pointing to _their_ registry if "public" root didn't yield the result. You cannot charge them with unfair competition because this is just an additional convinience to their customers, and besides they already do similar things with keyword search and messaging. If i understand correctly, no O.S. vendor has a contract with ICANN specifically prohibiting expansion of search capabilities. I think the present new.net scandal is bound to attract their attention.
We spoke the warnings, we spoke them again at the Nov00 ICANN meeting in MDR. However, what really triggered the race was when the ICANN BoD assigned the BIZ TLD, knowing full well that the Atlantic Root had been registering domains there for years. That told the new.net folks that it is okay to create conflicting delegations. After all, the ICANN is doing it ... why can't they? There is no law that regulates that.
Because the current DNS has a single contention point, it is very vulnerable. It can be very easily taken over by a large corporate entity.
There's a lot of other stuff behind that, but, I think that you get the point.
The Internet is successful precisely because it is decentralized. There is absolutely no reason to make the few "natural" central points vulnerable by having them to dispense what is considered intrinsically valuable property. (Thanks God, NAT made IP address allocations somewhat less critical). And if you think .COM fight is nasty... in other places conflicts like that are sometimes resolved by means of sending goons with guns. I personally was threatened over a domain name dispute, because of my affiliation with one popular community resource. Fortunately, that time that was merely a bluff. --vadim