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by axus 155 days ago
No dependency on a registrar sounds nice. More anonymous.
2 comments

> No dependency on a registrar sounds nice.

Actually the main benefit is no dependency on DNS (booth direct and root).

IP is a simple primitive, i.e. "is it routable or not ?".

The popular HTTP validation method has the same drawback whether using DNS or IP certificates? Namely, if you can compromise routes to hijack traffic, you can also hijack the validation requests. Right?
Yes, there have been cases where this has happened (https://notes.valdikss.org.ru/jabber.ru-mitm/), but it's really now into the realm of

1) How to secure routing information: some says RPKI, some argues that's not enough and are experimenting with something like SCION (https://docs.scion.org/en/latest/)

2) Principal-Agent problem: jabber.ru's hijack relied on (presumably) Hetzner being forced to do it by German law agents based on the powers provided under the German Telecommunications Act (TKG)

> some says RPKI

Part of the issue with RPKI is its taking time to fully deploy. Not as glacial as IPv6 but slower than it should be.

If there was 100% coverage then RPKI would have a good effect.

IP addresses also are assigned by registrars (ARIN in the US and Canada, for instance).
> IP addresses also are assigned by registrars (ARIN in the US and Canada, for instance).

To be pedantic for a moment, ARIN etc. are registries.

The registrar is your ISP, cloud provider etc.

You can get a PI (Provider Independent) allocation for yourself, usually with the assistance of a sponsoring registrar. Which is a nice compromise way of cutting out the middleman without becoming a registrar yourself.

You can also become a registrar yourself - at least, RIPE allows it. However, fees are significantly higher and it's not clear why you'd want to, unless you were actually providing ISP services to customers (in which case it's mandatory - you're not allowed to use a PI allocation for that)
> and it's not clear why you'd want to

The biggest modern-era reason is direct access to update your RPKI entries.

But this only matters if you are doing stuff that makes direct access worthwhile.

If your setup is mostly "set and forget" then you should just accept the lag associated with needing to open a ticket with your sponsor to update the RPKI.

Arguably neither is particularly secure, but you must have an IP so only needing to trust one of them seems better.