5 ms·

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)

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.
- gregmac 7y ago
  > Islands already exist, with national firewalls, corporate networks, dark nets And you don't see companies posting their addresses on those things. They still advertise "example.org" not "if you're in {county} use {county-specific address}, or on Tor use {onion address} or using {decentralized DNS} use example.com". > A dominant decentralized system How does this result in a different situation then the "centralized" DNS we have today?
  - colordrops 7y ago
    > How does this result in a different situation then the "centralized" DNS we have today? If, for instance, the DNS entries were tied to entries in a blockchain, such as namecoin, then no 3rd party would be involved in a transaction to transfer the domain, no annual fees would be required, and no one could block or remove an entry.
autoexec 7y ago
> You should have no doubt that, for example, Facebook would make a "the internet" which was 100% Facebook-operated sites. AOL already tried that back when they were still sending floppies through the mail. They were the largest ISP on earth and couldn't keep people in their little walled off corner of the internet. I don't think anyone else is going to be more successful.
- taeric 7y ago
  They were probably more successful than you'd like to acknowledge. And the modern companies do have a fair bit more power.
- umanwizard 7y ago
  They might not have been able to keep people there forever, sure. But their walled garden was “the internet” to a major chunk of people in the US for quite a long time. Remember when TV commercials would tell you a company’s AOL keyword?
  - kortilla 7y ago
    Yeah, that was around the time the internet wasn’t even relevant to the majority of the first world population. Trying to make comparisons to how it might look today is pointless. At AOLs peak, it had about 35 million subscribers. Comcast alone has nearly that many.
  - dehrmann 7y ago
    Or when people would tell you their ICANN domain?

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.
gregmac 7y ago
> Islands already exist, with national firewalls, corporate networks, dark nets And you don't see companies posting their addresses on those things. They still advertise "example.org" not "if you're in {county} use {county-specific address}, or on Tor use {onion address} or using {decentralized DNS} use example.com". > A dominant decentralized system How does this result in a different situation then the "centralized" DNS we have today?
- colordrops 7y ago
  > How does this result in a different situation then the "centralized" DNS we have today? If, for instance, the DNS entries were tied to entries in a blockchain, such as namecoin, then no 3rd party would be involved in a transaction to transfer the domain, no annual fees would be required, and no one could block or remove an entry.

autoexec 7y ago

> You should have no doubt that, for example, Facebook would make a "the internet" which was 100% Facebook-operated sites. AOL already tried that back when they were still sending floppies through the mail. They were the largest ISP on earth and couldn't keep people in their little walled off corner of the internet. I don't think anyone else is going to be more successful.

taeric 7y ago
They were probably more successful than you'd like to acknowledge. And the modern companies do have a fair bit more power.
umanwizard 7y ago
They might not have been able to keep people there forever, sure. But their walled garden was “the internet” to a major chunk of people in the US for quite a long time. Remember when TV commercials would tell you a company’s AOL keyword?
- kortilla 7y ago
  Yeah, that was around the time the internet wasn’t even relevant to the majority of the first world population. Trying to make comparisons to how it might look today is pointless. At AOLs peak, it had about 35 million subscribers. Comcast alone has nearly that many.
- dehrmann 7y ago
  Or when people would tell you their ICANN domain?