RFC 9498 on the GNU Name System

Re:RFC 9498 on the GNU Name System by ggm on Tuesday November 21, 2023 @04:23AM (#38361352)

I have mixed feelings. A unitary root of naming and the dns is a huge value proposition to walk away from. Fitting gnu names under .alt is only partly ameliorative.

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Re:RFC 9498 on the GNU Name System by crotchfire on Tuesday November 21, 2023 @05:40AM (#38361898)

I see it exactly the opposite way.

Over time the unitary root of naming has attracted increasing levels of censorship, tracking, abusive seziure, and oppression.

The dream of a worldwide namespace has become a nightmare. Let's wake up.

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Re:RFC 9498 on the GNU Name System by zaphar on Tuesday November 21, 2023 @07:55AM (#38363029)

Okay, you named some downsides of the unitary root. Now name the downsides of non-unitary roots.

Otherwise your proposal lacks the context to decide if it's a worthwhile tradeoff or not.

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Re:RFC 9498 on the GNU Name System by rendaw on Tuesday November 21, 2023 @08:06AM (#38363137)

Momentum, random names and (possibly) higher latency. IIRC IPFS is particularly bad latency-wise but I'm not sure how much of that is name lookup vs file transfer, and that could be implementation specific. Name lookups are also very cacheable.

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Re:RFC 9498 on the GNU Name System by nine_k on Tuesday November 21, 2023 @08:27AM (#38363310)

I think what's missing is that squatters and other bad actors are going to attack the distributed name system, too. It should be somehow resilient, and ideally resistant, against deliberate misuse by powerful parties. For instance, DoS attacks that pollute the namespace and could make the distributed naming service too slow or resource-intensive will necessarily be mounted.

This is one place where a significant proof of work, along the lines of Namecoin or handshake.org, would make sense. (Another place is password hashing, for example.)

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Re:RFC 9498 on the GNU Name System by crotchfire on Tuesday November 21, 2023 @02:42PM (#38368940)

> IPFS is particularly bad latency-wise I'm not sure how much of that is name lookup

All of that is due to their mistake of trying to use a sessionful protocol for their DHT.

Bittorrent got this right -- sessionless DHT -- which is why IPFS remains a rounding error compared to bittorrent, and will remain so until they adopt a sessionless DHT.

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Re:RFC 9498 on the GNU Name System by anacrolix on Sunday November 26, 2023 @05:20AM (#38420549)

100%. I've been saying this for years.

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Re:RFC 9498 on the GNU Name System by Joker_vD on Tuesday November 21, 2023 @07:32AM (#38362760)

...and do separate nation-wide namespaces? We have those already, and they're actually the main source of censorship, abusive seizure and oppression.

Also, whether there is one namespace root or many, we all still live in a single world.

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Re:RFC 9498 on the GNU Name System by schanzen on Tuesday November 21, 2023 @09:19AM (#38363923)

Basically that means you have an issue with https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9476.html, not GNS.

GNS, in theory, could replace DNS (the technology) and reuse its current root governance model as default.

From the point of view of GNS namespace governance is separate from name resolution protocols. Of course, from the point of view of a lot of DNS folks, DNS is both: The governance (ICANN) and the technology (RFC 1035 et al) and indivisible.

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