Subject: [DNSOP] Post-Interim considering the 4 proposals

From: Hugo Maxwell Connery <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 15 May 2015 11:28:45 +0000

Hi,

I include below the last of the 8 sections which are included 
in the attached piece.  I offer this to the DNSOP list for 
consideration in the existing 4 proposals for special names registration.

I hope that people will read the full text, though you will be 
bored by (and possibly complain about) the first section.

I welcome all comments/complaints.

The entirety is 1172 / 200 / 3 (words / lines / pages).

Regards,
--
Hugo Connery, Head of IT, DTU Environment, http://www.env.dtu.dk

-- last section --

More Commentary and Even More Personal Opinion

I believe that the grothoff and appelbaum drafts are
the first cases of testing the mechanism for the use
of the special names registry.  I also assume that the
registry was created to be used for more than its initial
propulation with things like .local and .invalid.

Additionally, I agree with some members of the DNSOP
community that names matter.  "my-product.invalid" is not
a good way to start a venture.  Should .alt be available
"my-product.alt" is far preferrable as confirmed by a
member of the I2P community both at the Interim meeting
and in later mailing list communication (str4d).  Indeed,
that person claims that .alt would have been used if it
was both available and understood.

I have little concern for the corp request, but it gains
weight by having potential operational impacts in the DNS
space.  As mentioned I could not find a draft and thus
have no knowledge of its technical nature.

I think that the key decision is appelbaum.  It meets all
criteria which I list above.

If this request cannot be processed effectively, that lack
of efficacy throws into question the entire nature of RFC6761.

As stated, I assume that RFC6761 was well considered and
that the registry was intended to be ammended.

IMHO, the appelbaum (.onion) proposal meets all possible
standards for approval.

Finally, I wish to support the .alt proposal.  I believe
that it is wise to create a "reading neutral" space for
the creation/testing/deployment of alternate name space
communications technologies, and in this regard I will
quote Bruce Schneier from his presentation at IETF 88:

"Second, target dispersal.

We were safer when our email was at 10,000 ISPs than when
it's at ten. Fundamentally, it makes it easier for the
NSA and others to collect. So anything to disperse targets
makes sense."

---

From: hellekin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 15 May 2015 11:22:32 -0300

> Hi,
*** Thank you for this report.  I hope to read the minutes soon.

*

I note that you omitted to mention Namecoin and the .BIT pTLD.

*

You wrote, referring to overlay networks: "Their reluctance to use the
DNS for name resolution is possibly due to its unencrypted public
leaking of name searches."

Even if that could be a relevant argument for privacy, the technical
ground is way simpler than that, as introduced in the P2PNames draft:
the DNS is hierarchical, and these systems are peer-to-peer, and use
peer-to-peer mechanisms to manage, "delegate", and resolve domains.  It
would be like saying an electric car has reluctance using gasoline
possibly due to its liquid form.  P2P overlay networks are different in
nature, they rely on algorithms to ensure the attribution and resolution
of names can be automated and never conflict in the global namespace
they use.  They achieve this without administrative decisions, but
solely on the basis of cryptographic integrity.

*

You wrote: "DNSOP wishes to make claims individually, rather than in
bulk.  Thus, the grothoff draft is rejected (or at least unprioritised)
on this basis"

Was that discussed during the interim meeting?  I have an objection to
this form: although it makes sense to consider domain names for
reservation on an individual basis, there are at least two sound
technical reasons in favor of registering more than one domain at a time
:

1) proximity of specifications (e.g., .onion, .zkey, and .b32.i2p are
all self-authenticating cryptographic hashes of the destination service)
,

2) complementarity of names (in order to break past the limitations
described by the Zooko Triangle, .gnu and .zkey are complementary; the
Tor Project uses .onion for resolution, and .exit for tunneling to
specific exit nodes)

The latter means that if one domain is reserved and the other not, the
system is dicey.  This point is particularly important because it will
influence the next step for P2PNames.  As I mentioned already the plan
to move on is to turn the P2PNames draft into an informal RFC and
extract the domain reservation bits to respective drafts.  Although I
disagree that P2P overlay networks should be considered separately, I
even more disagree that they should not be considered as whole systems.
 Thus the most obvious split we consider is to do one draft per system,
which happens to be a single domain just for one (Namecoin).

I'm all ears, thank you for your continued attention,

==
hk