8 ms·

I've been thinking a lot about the sheer downsides of DNS overall. We need something different. Something decentralized, encrypted, something not reliant on a p

I've been thinking a lot about the sheer downsides of DNS overall. We need something different. Something decentralized, encrypted, something not reliant on a protocol that hasn't kept pace with security and privacy and we need something verifiable that provides accountability. As others have said TLDs have become a racket. Only the priveleged and nation states have the authority to use the system as a funnel of ridiculous revenue and rate manipulation. We don't need DNS anymore. It's become more of a lynchpin to bottleneck and advance control of the few and continues to erode our privacy as it stands today. What's next?

judge2020 7y ago
The problem is that DNS powers the internet as we know it, getting everything ever to switch over is at least another 30 years after you make a protocol (that would also need to have literally no downsides).
- cobookman 7y ago
  Not sure I agree. If FF & Chrome both supported it...it'd be in effect in < 5 years total. Just look how quickly DoH is being rolled out, or Google's QUIC. Realistically if Google, Mozilla, Cloudflare, Apple, Microsoft, and a few others agree that this move is bad, and wanted to stand up a new .org TLD...they could, and I don't believe it'd be illegal (IANAL).
  - zokier 7y ago
    Web is only small part of internet
    - nsomaru 7y ago
      Yes, but most of the internet is exposed to users via the web anyways. OSs would need to follow suit, sure — to make everything that’s not a browser work so that the alternative lookup mechanism is used instead of traditional DNS. How long do you think that would take? Not too long methinks.
gowld 7y ago
We don't want DNS anymore, but we don't have a replacement. It's the same as Facebook->Diaspora, Twitter->Mastodon. The non-centralized versions are too hard to deploy to all the non-techies out there, despite being the "morally" correct architecture.
- behringer 7y ago
  The only thing wrong with DNS is that we entrust it to a corrupt government. It's time another country step in and take control and replace ICANN.
  - autoexec 7y ago
    > It's time another country step in and take control What's to stop them from being just as corrupt? It's too much for any one country to have control over. It'd be far better to come up with a way to take the power out of the hands of any one entity so that we don't have to keep moving it around when the people holding all the power are inevitably corrupted by it.
    - zokier 7y ago
      Abandoning the whole idea of gTLDs and using only ccTLDs kinda accomplishes that, each country would control only their part.
  - ftvy 7y ago
    ICANN is a non-profit organization, not a government entity.
- drngdds 7y ago
  I can't speak for Diaspora, but Mastodon isn't any harder to use than Twitter. It's mostly network effects that keep people there.
sneak 7y ago
Namecoin did this, and I think there are similar efforts on Ethereum, but it turns out that the tyranny of the installed base is a real thing.
gregmac 7y ago
If you decentralize, you don't end up with something equivalent to "the internet" anymore -- you end up with several islands of things that (to varying degrees) resemble "the internet", and run on the same layer 4 fabric, but are largely isolated from one another. I think we actually experience a mild version of this today, where entities publish their all their Twitter/Facebook/Instagram/Snapchat/Whatsapp/Linkedin etc profiles. I can't help but see whatever this distributed DNS replacement is as basically being this situation but without the backstop of globally-accessible websites and e-mail addresses. You should have no doubt that, for example, Facebook would make a "the internet" which was 100% Facebook-operated sites.
- colordrops 7y ago
  Islands already exist, with national firewalls, corporate networks, dark nets, etc. Decentralization of DNS would just take middlemen out of the picture. A dominant decentralized system would probably handle most requests if one were to ever get off the ground, making it equivalent to what we have now.
  - Spooky23 7y ago
    Why? DNS worked just fine with nonprofits and government entities who weren’t leeches.
    - colordrops 7y ago
      But it no longer works fine. If there is money or power in something, it will inevitably get corrupted if it can be centralized or captured.
    - undersuit 7y ago
      Why? Because even you are using the past tense. The genie is out of the bottle.
    - kortilla 7y ago
      Because centralized power run by people gets corrupted and bogged down by special interests.
brightball 7y ago
.onion?
lazzlazzlazz 7y ago
https://www.handshake.org/ https://www.handshake.org/ Handshake Name Service (HNS) is working on this problem from an interesting angle, with some significant institutional support.
pcr910303 7y ago
Looks likes you’re wanting the decentralized web [0][1][2]. The DNS equivalent technology there is DHT(distributed hash tables) [3] which was used in torrent technology for a few years. Ever wondered about how you can find the torrent seeders without a centralized entity? The Bittorrent DHT is the underlying tech. [0] https://ipfs.io/ https://ipfs.io/ [1] https://dat.foundation/ https://dat.foundation/ [2] https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/ https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/ [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_hash_table https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_hash_table
- progval 7y ago
  > Ever wondered about how you can find the torrent seeders without a centralized entity? The Bittorrent DHT is the underlying tech. The Bittorrent DHT is not fully decentralized, it needs a list of hardcoded bootstrap nodes. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1181301/how-does-a-dht-in-a-bittorent-client-get-bootstrapped https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1181301/how-does-a-dht-i...
  - kortilla 7y ago
    Which can easily be changed. The bootstrap nodes don’t hold any special power.
  - pcr910303 7y ago
    Well, it's for ease-of-use. Anyone can make an alternative DHT with their own bootstrap nodes, but the Bittorrent main one is the biggest, therefore most programs have that one hard-coded. Anyone can make an alternative client that uses the exactly same tech with different bootstrap nodes, and once they gain popularity, there will be people using that. Democratic, I would say.
  - sliken 7y ago
    Yes, sort of. That's one way to get peers, but clients support other ways to peers. So in practice you can get peers from the list of previous peers, PEX (peer exchange), or a tracker for a given torrent. So in practice once you talk to a few bittorrent peers (of millions) you likely are talking to another DHT peer and can bootstrap. Also given that there's typically millions of peers in the DHT, even brute forcing it by search IPv4 (4 billion addresses) for a few million peers is likely to only involve a few 1000 UDP packets or so.
tenebrisalietum 7y ago
I liked Namecoin.
- everfree 7y ago
  Ethereum Name Service is doing something similar on Ethereum.
antpls 7y ago
I'm not convinced we are talking about a decentralization issue. We could achieve the same result with laws. Just make what is happening illegal, corruption is already illegal. Furthermore, decentralization won't solve the basic economy rules of offer/demand. Even with a decentralized system, website will still be referenced by natural words ("domains"), which can be owned by only one site-owner at a time, which means there will always be people ready to spent a lot of money to acquire a domain/reference. I'm for decentralization in general, but in the current case I fail to see how decentralization alone will make domain owning fairer
- fauigerzigerk 7y ago
  In this particular case, the problem is not that individual domains can be traded at market prices though. The problem is that organisations have to rent their domains from a central authority that can hike the rent for an entire TLD to some fantasy price. So the hierarchical structure of DNS is clearly what creates an opportunity for corruption and extortion. And let's not forget that DNS is ultimately a global issue, which means that the rule of law cannot be taken for granted. Laws have to be part of the solution. But it's easier to legislate effectively if the underlying structure doesn't invite corruption, authoritarian abuse and market dysfunction in the first place.
  - zokier 7y ago
    > And let's not forget that DNS is ultimately a global issue, which means that the rule of law cannot be taken for granted. I think this strongly points towards ccTLDs being the best solution. It is very difficult to get all the different countries to agree on common rules/governance for the legacy TLDs, but if everyone gets their own independent corner then that should be easier to get agreements on. Dividing the control by country also conveniently avoids any single one being able to cause as much damage as ICANN now is.
    - fauigerzigerk 7y ago
      I think ccTLDs don't work so well in a globalised world. Many internet services are not country specific, and ccTLDs sort of put you in the local business category.
fiatjaf 7y ago
All these Ethereum/Namecoin/Whatever solutions aren't really solutions. They're subject to namesquatting, arbitrary prices, arbitrary decisions regarding TLDs and they end up being centralized in the end for various reasons. I think a good solution is to switch to using petnames instead of global names. https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/02/petnames.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/02/petnames.html

judge2020 7y ago

The problem is that DNS powers the internet as we know it, getting everything ever to switch over is at least another 30 years after you make a protocol (that would also need to have literally no downsides).

cobookman 7y ago
Not sure I agree. If FF & Chrome both supported it...it'd be in effect in < 5 years total. Just look how quickly DoH is being rolled out, or Google's QUIC. Realistically if Google, Mozilla, Cloudflare, Apple, Microsoft, and a few others agree that this move is bad, and wanted to stand up a new .org TLD...they could, and I don't believe it'd be illegal (IANAL).
- zokier 7y ago
  Web is only small part of internet
  - nsomaru 7y ago
    Yes, but most of the internet is exposed to users via the web anyways. OSs would need to follow suit, sure — to make everything that’s not a browser work so that the alternative lookup mechanism is used instead of traditional DNS. How long do you think that would take? Not too long methinks.

gowld 7y ago

We don't want DNS anymore, but we don't have a replacement. It's the same as Facebook->Diaspora, Twitter->Mastodon. The non-centralized versions are too hard to deploy to all the non-techies out there, despite being the "morally" correct architecture.

behringer 7y ago
The only thing wrong with DNS is that we entrust it to a corrupt government. It's time another country step in and take control and replace ICANN.
- autoexec 7y ago
  > It's time another country step in and take control What's to stop them from being just as corrupt? It's too much for any one country to have control over. It'd be far better to come up with a way to take the power out of the hands of any one entity so that we don't have to keep moving it around when the people holding all the power are inevitably corrupted by it.
  - zokier 7y ago
    Abandoning the whole idea of gTLDs and using only ccTLDs kinda accomplishes that, each country would control only their part.
- ftvy 7y ago
  ICANN is a non-profit organization, not a government entity.
drngdds 7y ago
I can't speak for Diaspora, but Mastodon isn't any harder to use than Twitter. It's mostly network effects that keep people there.

sneak 7y ago

Namecoin did this, and I think there are similar efforts on Ethereum, but it turns out that the tyranny of the installed base is a real thing.

gregmac 7y ago

If you decentralize, you don't end up with something equivalent to "the internet" anymore -- you end up with several islands of things that (to varying degrees) resemble "the internet", and run on the same layer 4 fabric, but are largely isolated from one another. I think we actually experience a mild version of this today, where entities publish their all their Twitter/Facebook/Instagram/Snapchat/Whatsapp/Linkedin etc profiles. I can't help but see whatever this distributed DNS replacement is as basically being this situation but without the backstop of globally-accessible websites and e-mail addresses. You should have no doubt that, for example, Facebook would make a "the internet" which was 100% Facebook-operated sites.

colordrops 7y ago
Islands already exist, with national firewalls, corporate networks, dark nets, etc. Decentralization of DNS would just take middlemen out of the picture. A dominant decentralized system would probably handle most requests if one were to ever get off the ground, making it equivalent to what we have now.
- Spooky23 7y ago
  Why? DNS worked just fine with nonprofits and government entities who weren’t leeches.
  - colordrops 7y ago
    But it no longer works fine. If there is money or power in something, it will inevitably get corrupted if it can be centralized or captured.
  - undersuit 7y ago
    Why? Because even you are using the past tense. The genie is out of the bottle.
  - kortilla 7y ago
    Because centralized power run by people gets corrupted and bogged down by special interests.

brightball 7y ago

.onion?

lazzlazzlazz 7y ago

https://www.handshake.org/ https://www.handshake.org/ Handshake Name Service (HNS) is working on this problem from an interesting angle, with some significant institutional support.

pcr910303 7y ago

Looks likes you’re wanting the decentralized web [0][1][2]. The DNS equivalent technology there is DHT(distributed hash tables) [3] which was used in torrent technology for a few years. Ever wondered about how you can find the torrent seeders without a centralized entity? The Bittorrent DHT is the underlying tech. [0] https://ipfs.io/ https://ipfs.io/ [1] https://dat.foundation/ https://dat.foundation/ [2] https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/ https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/ [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_hash_table https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_hash_table

progval 7y ago
> Ever wondered about how you can find the torrent seeders without a centralized entity? The Bittorrent DHT is the underlying tech. The Bittorrent DHT is not fully decentralized, it needs a list of hardcoded bootstrap nodes. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1181301/how-does-a-dht-in-a-bittorent-client-get-bootstrapped https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1181301/how-does-a-dht-i...
- kortilla 7y ago
  Which can easily be changed. The bootstrap nodes don’t hold any special power.
- pcr910303 7y ago
  Well, it's for ease-of-use. Anyone can make an alternative DHT with their own bootstrap nodes, but the Bittorrent main one is the biggest, therefore most programs have that one hard-coded. Anyone can make an alternative client that uses the exactly same tech with different bootstrap nodes, and once they gain popularity, there will be people using that. Democratic, I would say.
- sliken 7y ago
  Yes, sort of. That's one way to get peers, but clients support other ways to peers. So in practice you can get peers from the list of previous peers, PEX (peer exchange), or a tracker for a given torrent. So in practice once you talk to a few bittorrent peers (of millions) you likely are talking to another DHT peer and can bootstrap. Also given that there's typically millions of peers in the DHT, even brute forcing it by search IPv4 (4 billion addresses) for a few million peers is likely to only involve a few 1000 UDP packets or so.

tenebrisalietum 7y ago

I liked Namecoin.

everfree 7y ago
Ethereum Name Service is doing something similar on Ethereum.

antpls 7y ago

I'm not convinced we are talking about a decentralization issue. We could achieve the same result with laws. Just make what is happening illegal, corruption is already illegal. Furthermore, decentralization won't solve the basic economy rules of offer/demand. Even with a decentralized system, website will still be referenced by natural words ("domains"), which can be owned by only one site-owner at a time, which means there will always be people ready to spent a lot of money to acquire a domain/reference. I'm for decentralization in general, but in the current case I fail to see how decentralization alone will make domain owning fairer

fauigerzigerk 7y ago
In this particular case, the problem is not that individual domains can be traded at market prices though. The problem is that organisations have to rent their domains from a central authority that can hike the rent for an entire TLD to some fantasy price. So the hierarchical structure of DNS is clearly what creates an opportunity for corruption and extortion. And let's not forget that DNS is ultimately a global issue, which means that the rule of law cannot be taken for granted. Laws have to be part of the solution. But it's easier to legislate effectively if the underlying structure doesn't invite corruption, authoritarian abuse and market dysfunction in the first place.
- zokier 7y ago
  > And let's not forget that DNS is ultimately a global issue, which means that the rule of law cannot be taken for granted. I think this strongly points towards ccTLDs being the best solution. It is very difficult to get all the different countries to agree on common rules/governance for the legacy TLDs, but if everyone gets their own independent corner then that should be easier to get agreements on. Dividing the control by country also conveniently avoids any single one being able to cause as much damage as ICANN now is.
  - fauigerzigerk 7y ago
    I think ccTLDs don't work so well in a globalised world. Many internet services are not country specific, and ccTLDs sort of put you in the local business category.

fiatjaf 7y ago

All these Ethereum/Namecoin/Whatever solutions aren't really solutions. They're subject to namesquatting, arbitrary prices, arbitrary decisions regarding TLDs and they end up being centralized in the end for various reasons. I think a good solution is to switch to using petnames instead of global names. https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/02/petnames.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/02/petnames.html