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Distributed, decentralized projects are great, when they build up the infrastructure in a way that respects existing network traffic. Yes, DNS is distributed and communal, but it's cheap only because it's minimal. Caching a few values for IP and MX lookups is relatively trivial, but if you purposefully start storing content in there, the whole network gets exponentially more expensive for everyone involved, especially once you cross a threshold where you can no longer easily send updates as simple key values and need to start worrying about encoding of larger chunks, network interruptions, checksums, etc. That complicates caching all over the DNS network. And if some DNS provides start supporting certain features and not others it's just going to lead to further fragmentation and user delays and a confusion about where and how to store and fetch data from this system depending on a user's region and likely DNS providers. It also presents authentication and integrity challenges for unencrypted uses, as in the case of DNS hijacking by local ISPs or governments. It's a shoehorning of data into a poor fit, and only because someone else is paying for it. That's what makes this endeavor selfish, not heroic. You're not "freeing" data, just shoving it into some dark corner of the web and hoping to profit from it. There have been a lot of actual hard work on the problem of decentralized information, from ipfs to freenet to tor to blockchains to dht... they all have thought about the problem in depth and built the infrastructure to try to make it happen, instead of leeching off someone else's work and pretending like it solves the problem. Sorry to be harsh. This just seems like a money grab rather than technical innovation. |
> DNS is distributed and communal, but it's cheap only because it's minimal.
Cheap for who? Users using free resolvers or businesses using DNS service providers?
Resolvers can choose not to serve/cache NUM answers. If there’s demand for NUM data the market will decide. Google, CF, Quad9 can look after themselves.
DNS Service providers could bill by bandwidth rather than per query. Again, the market will decide.
> It also presents authentication and integrity challenges for unencrypted uses, as in the case of DNS hijacking by local ISPs or governments.
I agree but DoH, DoT, DPRIVE and other initiatives are tackling this problem.
> It's a shoehorning of data into a poor fit, and only because someone else is paying for it.
Why is it a poor fit? We’re converting a human friendly domain (or NUM URI) into machine-friendly data. That’s the whole purpose of DNS.
DNS is comfortable transferring 5kb of data, but most NUM Records will be smaller than DNSSEC responses. In fact, most NUM records are smaller than the original DNS UDP packet limit of 512.
> That's what makes this endeavor selfish, not heroic. You're not "freeing" data, just shoving it into some dark corner of the web and hoping to profit from it.
We’re making the data available to developers for free, that’s a fact. If DNS TXT records are a dark corner of the internet then I’m pleased to shed some light on that. If rules come about to stop us doing this, so be it.
> There have been a lot of actual hard work on the problem of decentralized information, from ipfs to freenet to tor to blockchains to dht... they all have thought about the problem in depth and built the infrastructure to try to make it happen
I’m a fan of them all but how many of your non-tech friends have used them? Zero.
Realistically how much have any of us used them to do useful things that make our life easier?
I really appreciate your point of view and feedback. Clearly we’re on opposite sides of this but as I said, that’s why I’m here.