Re: [DNSOP] Interim DNSOP WG meeting on Special Use Names: some reading material

[Warren Kumari <[e-mail]>]

On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 3:17 PM, Ted Lemon <[e-mail]> wrote:
> On May 12, 2015, at 9:12 AM, Warren Kumari <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>
>> ... and this is some of the point of the .ALT pseudo-TLD -- if you
>> want to use a "TLD" that does not get resolved in the DNS, make your
>> namespace look like YYY.ALT. This *will* leak into the DNS, but should
>> be "dropped" (NXD) at the first resolver (helping with privacy and
>> general pollution issues). Now, if 5 people or 5,000,000 people use
>> it, it doesn't matter -- it never needs to be made a special use name,
>> because it isn't really in the DNS name space.
>
> .alt is good for experiments,

Yes -- and I originally had some text in my mail about that, then
removed it because I didn't want to open this can of worms.

One of the uses is "Make your new namespace as YYY.ALT, and get some
folk using it. Once you can demonstrate that you have a bunch of users
(like Onion / ToR), you will have a much much easier time convincing
the IESG that you should get YYY as a special use name, and slowly
migrate over to that". If you have designed your protocol / system
cleverly, the migration may be easy^w not horrendous...


>  but I don't see it gaining popularity as a replacement for genuine special-use names. Compare .home to .home.alt, for example. There is elegance in the implementation, and there is elegance in the presentation, and I think the latter inevitably wins, whether we want it to or not.

Yup. But having 300 people all asking for $cool_string gets, um,
tedious. Having a first pass, so that only those who actually
demonstrate that someone want to use it means that (hopefully) you end
up with fewer applicants.

Now, you still have the "metric" problem. How do you know that there
really are "enough" users of YYY.ALT to justify reserving YYY (or, YYZ
if YYY is already in use)? Dunno - but, you already have this issue. I
think a large amount of it comes down to humans making a decision --
I, you, and my auntie Eve have all heard of Onion. It's clear that
*someone* is using it. Perhaps that's the best we can do...

W




-- 
I don't think the execution is relevant when it was obviously a bad
idea in the first place.
This is like putting rabid weasels in your pants, and later expressing
regret at having chosen those particular rabid weasels and that pair
of pants.
   ---maf