Subject: dns vs gnutella

From: Alexis Yushin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2005 15:52:38 +0100

Hi,

I was wondering if anybody ever thought of using a gnutella-like technology
in lieu of the traditional dns to achieve the same functionality.

I don't want to begin a discussion on why and/or how that would or not work.
At this point I merely would like to know if anyone on this list is aware of
any such project.

If you wonder why I am asking this - a working theory is that a hierarchical
lookup mechanism might not be suitable for a profoundly non-hierarchical
network.

Alexis

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From: Jay Daley <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2005 23:17:34 +0000

Alexis

> in lieu of the traditional dns to achieve the same functionality.

I'm not sure if this is exactly what you are looking for, but we've been 
thinking about P2P DNS for several months and have a reasonably well 
developed plan for how it might work.  However we are some way off coding 
and there are still some big gaps in that plan.  This work is partly 
motivated by the view that DDoS is inherently possible so long as 
asymmetry exists between the attacker and defender, which P2P reduces.  If 
you combine this with DNSSEC then you maintain the integrity of the zone 
(and the authority of the registry) because only the key holder can create 
genuine records.

BTW I don't think this is a new idea.  A working P2P DNS was built using 
distributed hash tables:

  http://www.pdos.lcs.mit.edu/chord/papers/ddns.pdf

Jay Daley
Nominet UK

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From: Erik Rozendaal <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 09:34:08 +0100

> in lieu of the traditional dns to achieve the same functionality.

Distributed hash tables (DHTs) are getting a lot of attention in the 
peer-to-peer community and some research has been done on implementing 
DNS on top of a DHT.  For example: 
<URL:http://www.pdos.lcs.mit.edu/chord/papers/ddns.pdf>.

Erik

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From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2005 13:35:50 -0500

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

>>>>> "Alexis" == Alexis Yushin <[email-masked]> writes:
    Alexis> I was wondering if anybody ever thought of using a
    Alexis> gnutella-like technology in lieu of the traditional dns to
    Alexis> achieve the same functionality.

  Assuming that you have an appropriate trust mechanism, it could work.
  Take a look at DUNDi. 
  It attempts to replace DNS-born ENUM with a different mechanism.

- -- 
] Michael Richardson          Xelerance Corporation, Ottawa, ON |  firewalls  [
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