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RFC 9498 on the GNU Name System

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Re: RFC 9498 on the GNU Name System

#21

Post by nine_k »

rendaw wrote: post #19
zaphar wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.)

Re: RFC 9498 on the GNU Name System

#22

Post by petee »

account42 wrote: post #11
mikl wrote: post #9

[flagged]

There is nothing "toxic" about Stallman or GNU.

“GNU slash Linux”

Its a matter of personal opinion and perspective. I find their attitude generally to be toxic, even if it is just based in good ideals; how you communicate with others does matter.

Re: RFC 9498 on the GNU Name System

#23

Post by ekr____ »

dfox wrote: post #14
chrismorgan wrote: post #7

Note that this is in the Independent Submission stream, Informational category: > This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is published for informational purposes. This is a contribution to the RFC Series, independently of any other RFC stream. The RFC Editor has chosen to publish this document at its discretion and makes no statement about its value for implementation or deployment. Documen…

Which is the case for vast majority of RFCs.

Some clarification might help here.

People usually think of RFCs as being the output of the IETF, and the IETF is the biggest contributor by far. Roughly half of the IETF's RFCs are standards or on what's called the "standards track" (most Internet standards are formally at the "Proposed Standard" rather than "Standard" level). The remainder have some other status such as "Informational".

However, there are also other entities that publish into the RFC Series, including the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF), and the Internet Architecture Board (IAB). In addition, there is what's called the Independent Stream, in which an appointed editor just determines what documents can be published. Importantly, this last category hasn't gone through the IETF consensus process: they're just something someone wanted to publish as an RFC and the Independent Series Editor agreed. GNU Name System falls into this category.

Re: RFC 9498 on the GNU Name System

#24

Post by schanzen »

ggm wrote: post #6

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.

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.

Re: RFC 9498 on the GNU Name System

#25

Post by schanzen »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #3

Has anyone been following along with what the plan is for GNS? An RFC is quite cool but are there any zones being distributed over GNS to play around with?

We are currently working on mirroring some DNS TLDs: https://www.gnunet.org/en/news/2022-11-NGI-Entrust-GNS-TLDs....

I have been a bit preoccupied with the RFC and other stuff recently, but its progressing.

Re: RFC 9498 on the GNU Name System

#26

Post by schanzen »

nabla9 wrote: post #8

A distributed naming system intended to work with mesh networks like GNUnet. GNS does not support names which are simultaneously global, secure and human-readable. Instead, names are either global and not human-readable or not globally unique and human-readable. In GNS, each user manages their own zones and can delegate subdomains to zones managed by other users. For example, ICANN could just create 'DNS zone' that w…

Indeed that would work. In theory. Especially since we thought of that use case (delegation into DNS) with the GNS2DNS record type.

There is a BUT: You need an initial label for ICANN zone to resolve the names. Unless you have a resolver implementation that "hides" the zkey of ICANN in the UI. But technically, under the hood, a name for this ICANN zone would look like:

www.example.com.THEICANNZKEY...

ICANN could also publish the TLDs individually as zones, however, and you could have an "ICANN Start Zone" (see Start Zone in the RFC) consisting of the TLD/zone key mappings.

Re: RFC 9498 on the GNU Name System

#27

Post by zcw100 »

nabla9 wrote: post #8

A distributed naming system intended to work with mesh networks like GNUnet. GNS does not support names which are simultaneously global, secure and human-readable. Instead, names are either global and not human-readable or not globally unique and human-readable. In GNS, each user manages their own zones and can delegate subdomains to zones managed by other users. For example, ICANN could just create 'DNS zone' that w…

Zooko's triangle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zooko%27s_triangle You can't have it all.

Re: RFC 9498 on the GNU Name System

#28

Post by remram »

schanzen wrote: post #26
nabla9 wrote: post #8

A distributed naming system intended to work with mesh networks like GNUnet. GNS does not support names which are simultaneously global, secure and human-readable. Instead, names are either global and not human-readable or not globally unique and human-readable. In GNS, each user manages their own zones and can delegate subdomains to zones managed by other users. For example, ICANN could just create 'DNS zone' that w…

Indeed that would work. In theory. Especially since we thought of that use case (delegation into DNS) with the GNS2DNS record type. There is a BUT: You need an initial label for ICANN zone to resolve the names. Unless you have a resolver implementation that "hides" the zkey of ICANN in the UI. But technically, under the hood, a name for this ICANN zone would look like: www.example.com.THEICANNZKEY... ICANN could also…

Since the TLDs are multiplying with no end in sight, using a zone key seems smart.

Re: RFC 9498 on the GNU Name System

#29

Post by pavon »

nine_k wrote: post #20
extraduder_ire wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd settle for global and not human readable, if it means I get a domain I can use as a CNAME on a nicer domain. Dynamic dns services are nice and all, but needing to pre-register gets kind of annoying.

It can't possibly work, if you want your nicer domain to be globally unique. If you don't, it depends on how local your domain needs to be; maybe all you need is a record in /etc/hosts on your home router.

If I understand they want a (globally unique, secure) GNS name and a (globally unique, human friendly) traditional DNS name which acts as an alias for the GNS name via CNAME.

This can work, and sounds like a good compromise in that it lets machines and people who care deeply about security use your secure name (which is more portable than an IP address), while providing a human friendly name for people who don't care and just want things to work.

Re: RFC 9498 on the GNU Name System

#30

Post by schanzen »

pavon wrote: post #29
nine_k wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can't possibly work, if you want your nicer domain to be globally unique. If you don't, it depends on how local your domain needs to be; maybe all you need is a record in /etc/hosts on your home router.

If I understand they want a (globally unique, secure) GNS name and a (globally unique, human friendly) traditional DNS name which acts as an alias for the GNS name via CNAME. This can work, and sounds like a good compromise in that it lets machines and people who care deeply about security use your secure name (which is more portable than an IP address), while providing a human friendly name for people who don't care…

These are all valid deployment questions, which we tried to address in Appendix A.

In a nutshell, we expect that resolvers would ship with a (large) set of default "suffix-to-zone" mappings, that can be overridden by the user to provide a usable and convenient out-of-the box experience. Not that "we expect" means that this would be the ideal scenario, not something to expect when installing our reference implementation right now.

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