RE: Statements against new.net?

[Mathew_Butler]

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.

“Hey, tiger’s down!”

“Hey, one nine two dot one six eight dot one oh three dot two five three’s down!”

(Even if you take an example with 192.168 being where ALL the addresses in the network come from: “Hey, one oh three dot two five three’s down!”)

In order for the machine to be able to determine what to do, it must be programmed by the humans that created it. In order for the machine to be able to determine what to do in a situation that has more than one possibly-correct resolution, it must be given a set of rules in order to determine what needs to be done.

I will admit that it is possible (not plausible, but possible) for even an email system to be programmed with enough intelligence to be able to deal with the conflict. However, the key word is ‘system’ – defined as “all pieces in a computing environment that contribute to a given piece of data being processed the way the humans that are using it desire it to be processed.” Which includes all mail servers (speaking SMTP), as well as all mail clients (speaking SMTP, POP3, IMAP, whatever else), and name resolution (DNS, /etc/hosts, NIS, whatever else), and even the underlying virtual circuit technology (TCP/IPv[46]). The entire system must be programmed in a way that is consistent with how the user wants it to work… and getting even two sites to upgrade to a newer version of sendmail at the same time is difficult at best. Much less to get two sites to change their DNS configuration at the same time.

The point is: In order to do our jobs, we have to simplify these complex systems we’re responsible for as much as possible. At least with a globally-shared root zone, we’re removing THAT piece of complexity from the equation so we can determine what needs to be done at a higher level.

(Am I lazy? Perhaps. But I’d rather be lazy than crazy.)

-Mat Butler
Speaking for himself, not for his company.

[Vadim_Antonov2]

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