Re: Anti Capitalism?

[Simon Higgs <simon@higgs.com>]

At 12:55 AM -0800 1/3/97, Kent Crispin wrote:

> davidk@ISI.EDU allegedly said:
> >
> [...]
> >
> > I don't think that the registry repository should contain the whois data
> > at all. The repository should be as lightweight as possible, that is:
> >
> > - pointer to registrar that registered the data
> > - contain DNS configuration data
> > - public keys of registrars
> > - public keys of the domain holder (needed for transfer of
> >   domain registration services between registrars)
>
> I agree that the repository shouldn't contain whois data.
>
> We can actually go further than that -- there doesn't need to be
> *any* repository database -- DNS is completely adequate to serve that
> function.  Of course -- it still has to be decided who runs the
> primary nameserver...CORE?  Perhaps we just call DNS the repository.
>
> For example:
>
> wren            IN      NS      songbird.com.
>                 IN      NS      ns1.aztech.net.
>                 IN      TXT     "Registrar: registry@songbird.com"
>                 IN      TXT     "Contact-id: KC125"
>                 IN      TXT     "Contact-name: Kent Crispin"
>                 IN      TXT     "Contact-email: kent@songbird.com"
>                 IN      TXT     "Contact-address: etc"
>                 IN      TXT     "Contact-phone: etc"
>                 IN      TXT     "Contact-fax: etc"
>                 IN      TXT     "Contact-key: etc"
>
> This works fine.  It's easy to add the data to DNS (just a mechanical
> edit of a zone database file), and it's just a tiny bit of
> already-written code to extract it.
>
> So why a central database at all?
>

How do you reverse map the contact or registrar information from DNS?

> > The number of updates to the repository will then be the minimum since
> > one only needs to update it in case of:
> >
> > - a new domain
> > - a change in DNS configuration data
> > - a new registrar
>
> Yes.  All you really need is a central service that coordinates DNS
> updates.  The only data such a service needs to keep is information
> about *pending* updates, and authentication information about the
> different registrars.  Even for .com, a database of *pending* DNS
> updates would probably be well under 1000 items at any time.
>
> [...]
>
> > The repository makes a dump of this data available every day/week. Diffs
> > can be made available real-time (on a separate machine).
> >
> > The whois services can be run by the registrars (or other parties) and
> > can support redirects to other registrars by making use of the repository
> > dump.
>
> If the data is in DNS the central service doesn't have to do anything at
> all to support whois.
>


I'm not convinced. You have no search mechanism for anything other than
IP or domain names. How do you reverse map the other fields in DNS? You
can do this in whois, but not in DNS.


Regards,

Simon

--
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.