Statements against new.net?

Wed Mar 14 21:07:48 UTC 2001

Cube B23, 871 Fox Lane, San Jose, California, USA, North-Western
Quadrisphere, Earth, 3rd planet of Sol, Milky Way Galaxy, Universe.

I just hierarchally described my work location.  Assertion (2) given at
least one counter-example, assumed to be false until either restated or
counter-example disproven.

Assertion (1) assumed true.

How do multiple roots assist #1?  When I can type 'new.net' and, depending
on the root zone that I'm using, believe either ICANN's idea of new.net or
my personal root's delegation of the new.net. zone?

Your assertion about ICQ: ICQ provides a lookup function, and the only UIN
that I used on my ICQ list was my own to get it installed.  Are you
suggesting that instead of DNS zones, we should instead use an LDAP
directory (or something similar) to look up what we're searching for?

I think the idea of 'chosen' domain names is a stupid concept, in any case
-- though I do admit I -like- the mnemonic convenience of my email address
at home.

I think it's more likely that the DNS has probably scaled to the point that
it needs to be examined to be replaced.

-Mat Butler

-----Original Message-----
From: Vadim Antonov [mailto:avg at kotovnik.com]
Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2001 12:46 PM
To: Mathew Butler
Cc: nanog at merit.edu
Subject: RE: Statements against new.net? 

On Wed, 14 Mar 2001, Mathew  Butler wrote:

> The problem is, of course, that it's NOT human-to-human communication.
It's
> machine-to-machine communication, and human-to-machine communication, and
> DNS was designed to create a mnemonic representation of a way to reach a
> machine.

If it is machines communicating there's no need to do any mnemonics.  In
fact, it is still humans communicating, with the aid of the machines.

So... we have two design constraints:

1) people need to be able to locate and revisit somethings in the network

2) any meaningful hierarchial labeling of the real world is quite
   impossible, and runs into problems of scaling, adversity, and 
   entrenched notions of ownership.

Propping up DNS as-is only guarantees that the whole thing is going to be
pushed off the cliff on the second side.  Neither it is very good on the
first count.

So, instead of trying to fix the broken concept, and raising ridiculous
protests and indignation when someone tries to rock the boat, isn't it
easier just to go for a real permanent solution?  Which is to replace
"mnemonic" DNS with something deliberately mnemonic-free (like numeric
strings :) and leave the human-interaction part to the better and wildly
successful concept of navigation in a general graph.

The exising deployed software is nearly sufficient (and in many cases
quite adequate) to make this mode of communication easy to use.

My proposal is to create a special hierarchy (similar to tpc.int) which
can _only_ be used to register numeric "names" on first-come first-served
basis.  The "current" DNS then can go down in flames, for all i care.
Actually, I think this is inevitable, since some day someone will find a
way to win a lawsuit against the whatever central naming authority is.

Anyone who thinks numeric IDs do not work when "better" alphanumeric IDs
are possible needs to take a look at the ICQ.  It is _very_ successful in
case you didn't notice.  And so is telephony.

And in case you didn't notice that most people in the world do not speak
english, and do not use latin script, let me tell you the simple (and
quite obvious to someone who is not spoiled by American isolationism)
fact: for the majority of world population ASCII strings are only
marginally better than numbers in being "mnemonic" - and it is much easier
to pronounce numbers in a native language.

--vadim
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