America takes over DNS

Mon Apr 2 11:04:18 UTC 2007

On Mon, Apr 02, 2007 at 09:23:32AM +0100,
 michael.dillon at bt.com <michael.dillon at bt.com> wrote 
 a message of 46 lines which said:

> It is probably time to start looking at alternative naming
> systems. For instance, we have a much better understanding of P2P
> technology these days and a P2P mesh could serve as the top level
> finder in a naming system rather than having a fixed set of roots.

The only serious (?) proposal I've seen until now, CoDoNS
(http://www.cs.cornell.edu/people/egs/beehive/codons.php), uses
DNSSEC, so it has the same dependency on the US government.

> better understanding of webs of trust that we could apply to such a
> mesh. 

You mix up *resolution* of names (which could be done by a P2P mesh
like CoDoNS, replacing the root name servers) and *registration* of
names, which have to be hierarchical if you want to preserve unicity
of names. And this is the important point of control (the root name
servers are not controlled by the US government, unlike the
registration root).

So, you've not solved the problem.