6 ms·

One thing that surprises me is that there isn't more competition in this space. Alternate domain name systems by the Post COMINTERN bloc or something

p4bl0 3y ago
The OpenNIC project [1] maintains an alternative DNS root and supports a few alternative TLDs: .bbs, .chan, .cyb, .dyn, .geek, .gopher, .indy, .libre, .neo, .null, .o, .oss, .oz, .parody, and .pirate. My personal web page is available at http://pablo.rackham.pirate/ http://pablo.rackham.pirate/ for users of this alternative root =). I don't have a TLS certificate for it thought, because it's not supported by Let's Encrypt (same problem with my .onion address, but it's less of a problem because traffic is e2e encrypted anyway over Tor). Also, I don't know if there is any conflict with the new TLDs that were introduced by ICANN in 2015. I hope not :). [1] https://www.opennic.org/ https://www.opennic.org/
- bombcar 3y ago
  Weirdly enough apparently there are a few SSL cert issuers who will issue for .onion - maybe they would issue for OpenNIC.
  - p4bl0 3y ago
    Oh I'm sure that if you're willing to pay for a certificate you can get one for pretty much anything you want. I was specifically talking about Let's Encrypt :).
overstay8930 3y ago
Why? Rerooting will just only cause problems to solve a solution that doesn’t need to be solved. The only places that are offended by how America-centric DNS is, don’t actually care since they’re already blocking anything they don’t like. It’s hard to even have a DNS Root in Europe with how many European countries have normalized internet censorship. NetzDG would have caused an actual implosion of America if it ever existed here.
hardaker 3y ago
You may wish to read [RFC2826] which the Internet Architecture Board of years past wrote on why a unified name space is important for the Internet. [RFC2826]: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2826 https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2826
- zrm 3y ago
  That isn't necessarily incompatible with alternate domain name systems. If OpenNIC is registering names under .pirate and ICANN is aware of this then it can simply refrain from using .pirate as a TLD and you still have a unified namespace. It just happens by consensus rather than central authority. If they would get along a little better then you might even have the ICANN root servers direct queries for those TLDs to the OpenNIC servers. It's not obvious what benefit is achieved by not doing this.
  - hardaker 3y ago
    You may wish to read [RFC9476], which provides a solution for anchoring alternate name spaces in a way that provides both a signalling point for establishing that you've left the DNS and a way to prevent collisions with the DNS itself. [RFC9476]: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9476.html https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9476.html
    - zrm 3y ago
      This doesn't help much to prevent collisions though, does it? An alternate namespace is obviously not going to use a TLD that already exists in the DNS, but it's much more likely to use one that exists in a different alternate namespace they've never heard of, since those will be more obscure and more likely to be missed. Putting them both under .alt does nothing to prevent this. What you're really doing is reserving all of the as yet unallocated namespace to the DNS, privileging it over any alternatives which then have to use longer names. What you need is a mechanism for alternate namespaces to register their use of a particular subset of the global namespace against both other alternate namespaces and the DNS, at which point you wouldn't need to put them all under .alt. They also immediately damaged that subset of the namespace: > DNS stub and recursive resolvers do not need to look them up in the DNS context. Now some DNS stub resolver implementers or administrators will read this and reject any queries under .alt, making it unsuitable for any namespace you would like intermediary resolvers to look up in an upstream server that supports them.
toast0 3y ago
Alternate roots are basically unusable. Either your domain names are universally accessible, or someone needs to follow specific instructions to use them, in which case why use AlterNIC or OpenNIC, when you could just give instructions that were specific to your chosen domain name? Regardless of your grievences with ICANN, nearly universal consensus is almost certainly worth the price of using an ICANN delegated top level domain.
- zrm 3y ago
  > Either your domain names are universally accessible, or someone needs to follow specific instructions to use them, in which case why use AlterNIC or OpenNIC, when you could just give instructions that were specific to your chosen domain name? In theory there is a network effect. If it got popular enough, there is a possibility that major operating systems or browsers or recursive nameservers might start supporting one of the alternatives, which is never going to happen with a bespoke individual domain name.
zokier 3y ago
Afaik Russia has its own DNS roots under their "sovereign internet" program, see for example "3. The Implementation of a Russian National Domain Name System (DNS)" here: https://dgap.org/en/research/publications/deciphering-russias-sovereign-internet-law https://dgap.org/en/research/publications/deciphering-russia... I would assume that Chinese have similar capability, maybe some other countries too.
factormeta 3y ago
Would you consider https://handshake.org https://handshake.org to be one?

p4bl0 3y ago

The OpenNIC project [1] maintains an alternative DNS root and supports a few alternative TLDs: .bbs, .chan, .cyb, .dyn, .geek, .gopher, .indy, .libre, .neo, .null, .o, .oss, .oz, .parody, and .pirate. My personal web page is available at http://pablo.rackham.pirate/ http://pablo.rackham.pirate/ for users of this alternative root =). I don't have a TLS certificate for it thought, because it's not supported by Let's Encrypt (same problem with my .onion address, but it's less of a problem because traffic is e2e encrypted anyway over Tor). Also, I don't know if there is any conflict with the new TLDs that were introduced by ICANN in 2015. I hope not :). [1] https://www.opennic.org/ https://www.opennic.org/

bombcar 3y ago
Weirdly enough apparently there are a few SSL cert issuers who will issue for .onion - maybe they would issue for OpenNIC.
- p4bl0 3y ago
  Oh I'm sure that if you're willing to pay for a certificate you can get one for pretty much anything you want. I was specifically talking about Let's Encrypt :).

overstay8930 3y ago

Why? Rerooting will just only cause problems to solve a solution that doesn’t need to be solved. The only places that are offended by how America-centric DNS is, don’t actually care since they’re already blocking anything they don’t like. It’s hard to even have a DNS Root in Europe with how many European countries have normalized internet censorship. NetzDG would have caused an actual implosion of America if it ever existed here.

hardaker 3y ago

You may wish to read [RFC2826] which the Internet Architecture Board of years past wrote on why a unified name space is important for the Internet. [RFC2826]: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2826 https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2826

zrm 3y ago
That isn't necessarily incompatible with alternate domain name systems. If OpenNIC is registering names under .pirate and ICANN is aware of this then it can simply refrain from using .pirate as a TLD and you still have a unified namespace. It just happens by consensus rather than central authority. If they would get along a little better then you might even have the ICANN root servers direct queries for those TLDs to the OpenNIC servers. It's not obvious what benefit is achieved by not doing this.
- hardaker 3y ago
  You may wish to read [RFC9476], which provides a solution for anchoring alternate name spaces in a way that provides both a signalling point for establishing that you've left the DNS and a way to prevent collisions with the DNS itself. [RFC9476]: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9476.html https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9476.html
  - zrm 3y ago
    This doesn't help much to prevent collisions though, does it? An alternate namespace is obviously not going to use a TLD that already exists in the DNS, but it's much more likely to use one that exists in a different alternate namespace they've never heard of, since those will be more obscure and more likely to be missed. Putting them both under .alt does nothing to prevent this. What you're really doing is reserving all of the as yet unallocated namespace to the DNS, privileging it over any alternatives which then have to use longer names. What you need is a mechanism for alternate namespaces to register their use of a particular subset of the global namespace against both other alternate namespaces and the DNS, at which point you wouldn't need to put them all under .alt. They also immediately damaged that subset of the namespace: > DNS stub and recursive resolvers do not need to look them up in the DNS context. Now some DNS stub resolver implementers or administrators will read this and reject any queries under .alt, making it unsuitable for any namespace you would like intermediary resolvers to look up in an upstream server that supports them.

toast0 3y ago

Alternate roots are basically unusable. Either your domain names are universally accessible, or someone needs to follow specific instructions to use them, in which case why use AlterNIC or OpenNIC, when you could just give instructions that were specific to your chosen domain name? Regardless of your grievences with ICANN, nearly universal consensus is almost certainly worth the price of using an ICANN delegated top level domain.

zrm 3y ago
> Either your domain names are universally accessible, or someone needs to follow specific instructions to use them, in which case why use AlterNIC or OpenNIC, when you could just give instructions that were specific to your chosen domain name? In theory there is a network effect. If it got popular enough, there is a possibility that major operating systems or browsers or recursive nameservers might start supporting one of the alternatives, which is never going to happen with a bespoke individual domain name.

zokier 3y ago

Afaik Russia has its own DNS roots under their "sovereign internet" program, see for example "3. The Implementation of a Russian National Domain Name System (DNS)" here: https://dgap.org/en/research/publications/deciphering-russias-sovereign-internet-law https://dgap.org/en/research/publications/deciphering-russia... I would assume that Chinese have similar capability, maybe some other countries too.

factormeta 3y ago

Would you consider https://handshake.org https://handshake.org to be one?