Re: [Secdispatch] GNS at dinrg

["Schanzenbach, Martin" <[e-mail]>]

Hi Melinda,

> On 30. Jul 2020, at 14:58, Melinda Shore <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> Signed PGP part
> I had a conflict this morning and wasn't able to participate
> in the secdispatch session, but I've been asked about the GNS
> presentation at dinrg at IETF 104 (dinrg is an IRTF research
> group investigating decentralizing internet infrastructure
> elements).
> 
> The question of adopting GNS as an RG deliverable never came
> up.  Research groups operate differently from IETF working groups
> and are not heavily driven by deliverables.  In general, the
> feedback from the floor expressed concern about scalability and
> key management, DHT performance, and (as always), governance.

the DHT is not part of this draft. It is specifically out of scope.
Anyway, not the point I would like to make.

> I do think, however, that GNS remains more of a research project
> than a standardizable technology, as one of the bottom-line
> questions for the standardization of pretty much anything is
> whether or not it's deployable on the public internet.  Even
> if the technical questions about GNS are resolvable (little
> DNS joke in there) the governance question looks intractible
> ("we would advise ICANN not to assign any more names" doesn't
> seem as if something ICANN would be likely to act on).
> 
> Also, it's become more common to talk about DNS as part of
> the internet control plane and we're seeing increased use of
> the DNS to bind things other than addresses to domain names.
> That has implications for performance and scalability (see
> above), as well as the security model.  Perhaps that was
> addressed in today's presentation - I'll watch it once the
> video is posted.  It's interesting technology but unless
> they can both work out a very incremental deployment model
> and deal with the governance question (and I expect those two
> things can be linked) I'm not that optimistic about its
> deployability as a core piece of internet infrastructure.
> (I'd love to be wrong about that!).

I hope I understand all of your points. The way I read the charter
of DINRG correctly, our draft would fit into the goals and
objectives of this WG, right? Specifically:

"Some examples include name resolution (Namecoin, Ethereum Name Service) [...]"
(This point also came up in the discussions in secdispatch.)

And:

"Now is a good time to investigate these systems from an Internet technologies perspective, and to connect the domain expertise in the IRTF and IETF with the distributed systems and decentralized ledgers community."

The charter explicitly gives two name services that can be argued to have open questions with respect to governance
and scalability as well and completely open questions, for example with respect to sustainability.
And we are trying to address issues IETF/IRTF experts may have
by initiating discussions and did so at IETF meetings on multiple occasions.
So my question would be: Is DINRG the proper place to discuss those issues as well as improve
the draft and protocol?

Best
Martin

> 
> Melinda
> 
> --
> Melinda Shore
> [e-mail]
> 
> Software longa, hardware brevis
> 
> 
>