RFC - DNS VI - multiple commercial DNS that work like TLDs

Features
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Continuing the discussion from RFC - Decentralised Naming System V - No DNS:

Don’t take this as support :wink: but one way would be for billboards (etc) to include enough information to include a lookup service and their identity on the service. This isn’t restricted to solving the above problem just for your scheme. It can resolve to native SAFE addresses, so is a stand alone proposal for multiple provider DNS.

So you can imagine multiple services starting up which could be named memorably as:

  • lookup
  • business
  • spangle

Someone would register their desired “domain” name with one of these app/services (paying fee) to the service owner.

To support this, the network implements a special network owned address (a nice catchy domain in itself) which is used to host these services and handle the registered names. Let’s call the network thing “name”.

So let’s say you register “apple” with the service called “lookup”. On your napkin, billboard etc you would specify:

safe:lookup.name/apple

Or if you’d used business:

safe:business.name/apple

Or if you’d used “spangle”:

safe:spangle.name/apple

etc.

Its not ideal, but it maps fairly well to the existing DNS (so we can predict the behaviour) - the service names map quite well to TLDs. So the network could potentially make a substantial charge for the registration or use of one of these names on its “.name” facility.

The URLs are easily understood (if backwards). Perhaps we can somehow ditch the “.name” part and find a way for the network to handle these like real TLDs.

So instead of

safe:business.name/apple

You would have:

safe:apple.business

And obviously someone could setup “com”, “uk” etc so on SAFE we’d have domains that look very like the current TLD system:

safe:apple.com
safe:apple.uk
etc.

But each TLD would be administered by an app builder who paid to register with the network’s built in name service feature. Squatting on TLDs can be handled by making it very costly - as with the current system which is I think is about $200k for a TLD, but they actually auction them so it can be more.

This requires users to register with a commercial company - whoever owns the TLD - through their SAFE App - or a general purpose SAFE App that lists all the TLD services for you to choose from.

It effectively replicates the current system, but providing extra security, because once you have registered the domain, it could be made impossible for it to be changed without your signature. So avoiding many of the security issues of the current DNS.

There are various issues to be considered and decided on, but it seems we could come up with something remarkably similar to the existing DNS but with some of the problems removed.

This was a brain dump. Not thought through, but worthy of consideration I think.

3 Likes
2

Yeah, this does come to mind…

Here’s a variation: users are free to choose which such TLD’s to use. And under what names. So a commericial company may indeed create .business and charge money for registration there. But I as a user am still free to use their TLD or not and under which name. I can “mount” it as .c or .racket.

When a new user joins he is presented with a choice from say 20 most popular such “TLD”-s. He may click any number of them he likes and can change the names he’d like to use them under. This hopefully makes it easy for common people to start using the network.

So billboards will only be able to use names in this .business if it gains a wide enough popularity among users. And if these users more or less agree on which name to use it under (.business or .racket). And a user may still end up on a wrong website if his .business is not the one the advertiser meant… Hmm…

At one point I was thinking that MaidSafe Foundation could spawn a proxy Limited companany running one such namespace. The charter of the company would be written in such a way that all profit earned would be donated back to foundation. Separate company was suggested to idemnify the Foundation in case of a legal dispute.

Not all such registries have to be commercial. Some can be first-come-first served or any other schema. I was talking of this somewhat in my first topic but I decided to repeat the ideas here because of similarity.

3

Hey, a $1m idea!

We don’t kill off the current internet.
We let it be :smile:

The billboard will have a URL on the current internet
That page will have the .safe address on it :slight_smile: :slight_smile: :smile:

Isn’t that the best solution to the billboard problem?
As for the paper napkin - you can write your 16 character native address.

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Billboards, sounds like the term used before “link pages” were used. My grandkids would say thats so 90’s :sunglasses: Google took over from that.

Really I think what is being suggested as billboards would be better served as a search engine.

Why would we want TLDs? Thats my real question. I mean as a separate part of the SAFE name? To me it is attempting to bring back the network domain structure centralisation as a defined part of the SAFE network.

Have something as part of categorisation for sure, but not Top-Level-Domains