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It went as an unspoken, unquestionable assumption that telephony was the right model for data networking. - Van Jacobson DNS is the only global scale example o

It went as an unspoken, unquestionable assumption that telephony was the right model for data networking. - Van Jacobson DNS is the only global scale example of a broadly functional directory service with decent degree of flexibility in its decentralization. The PSTN is the opposite: it uses carriers, national infrastructure and a plethora of relatively closed systems to achieve the same. Observe: national carrier mobile number portability hacks. It is amusing that, after so many years, directory services for telephones are still under discussion. Looking around in 2021, it turns out that the complexity associated with running DNS means it has effectively slowly migrated to a smaller number of outsourced infrastructure providers, despite strong decentralization support in the protocol. To put it bluntly, it's more hassle than it's worth to run your own servers when you can outsource for ~free to globally distributed infrastructure that's professionally run and DoS resistant. We might also note that most voice calls in the world are now placed through IP software services with centralized identifier directories and never touch PSTN at all. Turns out humans like free, free likes cheap-to-provide, and centralized means cheap-to-provide. Turns out the market values users, so funding is a non-issue. It's sad that, as a result, the oldschool internet is being lost. But the internet was never inclusive, as it required too much technical nouse and good-behavioural assumption. Maybe the internet is just growing up. It's now the digital commons. While I applaud the effort for this protocol, and I frankly would be the first to sign up for a contact infrastructure service that provided reliable and best-effort security integrations for all legacy channels (SMS, fax, PSTN, mail, VPN) ... I can't see this effort turning the tide. After all, we already have dynamic DNS registrations and IPv6 mobile features, neither of which has been broadly adopted. Instead, I think we will see these protocols co-opted commercially or ignored.

1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago
"Looking around in 2021, it turns out that the complexity associated with running DNS means it has effectively slowly migrated to a smaller number of outsourced To put it bluntly, it's more hassle than it's worth to run your own servers when infrastructure providers, despite strong decentralization support in the protocol." The age-old elements of the protocol are still very reliable. I cannot agree with your conclusion that "its more hassle than its worth" to run DNS servers. Depends on the use case. DNS isn't just for companies. I use run DNS at home and I could not live without it. A third party provider would/could never offer the customised, creative solutions I created myself. There is a learning curve but I think it is less than, say, email service. Maybe not. You can run DNS without third parties and IMO you should. I think the stuff it allows you to do is well worth it. I think the reason I spent the time to learn DNS is that it is very fast. Instant, short text response. Much more pleasant than what websites have turned into. The old school is alive and well, but it does not need to hype anything, so what you see and hear is people hype-ing crap, not the good stuff that old, unsexy is much more reliable. All the third party DNS services could go down and it would not affect me much at all, because I have so much stored DNS data. Most of the DNs traffic I produce never leaves the loopback. Makes the UX much faster.

1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago

"Looking around in 2021, it turns out that the complexity associated with running DNS means it has effectively slowly migrated to a smaller number of outsourced To put it bluntly, it's more hassle than it's worth to run your own servers when infrastructure providers, despite strong decentralization support in the protocol." The age-old elements of the protocol are still very reliable. I cannot agree with your conclusion that "its more hassle than its worth" to run DNS servers. Depends on the use case. DNS isn't just for companies. I use run DNS at home and I could not live without it. A third party provider would/could never offer the customised, creative solutions I created myself. There is a learning curve but I think it is less than, say, email service. Maybe not. You can run DNS without third parties and IMO you should. I think the stuff it allows you to do is well worth it. I think the reason I spent the time to learn DNS is that it is very fast. Instant, short text response. Much more pleasant than what websites have turned into. The old school is alive and well, but it does not need to hype anything, so what you see and hear is people hype-ing crap, not the good stuff that old, unsexy is much more reliable. All the third party DNS services could go down and it would not affect me much at all, because I have so much stored DNS data. Most of the DNs traffic I produce never leaves the loopback. Makes the UX much faster.