[Freedombox-discuss] Distributed/non-hierarchical naming/discovery system

[James Vasile]

On Thu, 17 Feb 2011 18:35:27 +0000, "stillyet at googlemail.com" <stillyet at googlemail.com> wrote:
> What I've read so far on Freedombox doesn't seem to cover the issues of
> naming and discovery of nodes.
> 
> DNS, as we currently have it, is an inherently hierarchical naming system.
> It has a single point of failure - or capture - in the root name servers.
> Even if freedombox used a different root name server from the standard ICANN
> controlled ones, it would still be something for hostiles to attack in order
> to disrupt or disable the worldwide freedombox network, or to capture
> individual node addresses within the freedombox space.
> 
> The alternative is a distributed peer-to-peer naming and discovery system
> such as the IDONS proposal, http://www.idons.org. It seems to me  that would
> have a very natural fit with what is being proposed for freedombox.
> 
> Apologies if people have already thought of (and perhaps discarded) this
> idea.
> 

Idons is not a bad idea.  I was thinking of using the existing
infrastructure, though.  Dynamic DNS can solve a whole lot of problems
here.  As you connect or disconnect boxes, they can register with as
many Dynamic DNS servers as they choose.  And the boxes themselves can
be dynamic dns servers where appropriate (we'd almost certainly have to
host our own somewhere).

Then, your dns aliases help you do identity management.  Just like your
email addresses do.  People who come to your box via
your_name at frdm.your_work_place.com get one look at you.  People who come
in via nickname at box.wild_and_crzy.org get a different set of resources
and services.

It uses existing, robust, commonly available services.