[Freedombox-discuss] In-the-cloud infrastructure and business involvement (was: distributed DNS)

Jonas Smedegaard dr at jones.dk
Wed Mar 16 19:27:05 UTC 2011


On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 05:34:20PM +0000, Bjarni Rúnar Einarsson wrote:
>On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 4:13 PM, <bertagaz at ptitcanardnoir.org> wrote:
>
>>
>> Why would [centralized DNS] be needed if the main idea is that each 
>> service is hosted on your freedombox or the one of your friend, which 
>> helps a lot to bring back data close to you, or in trusted places. 
>> Sure some pieces will be hard to get rid off, like a registrar for 
>> the top level domain, but there are ways get rid of a lot of this 
>> pieces.
>>
>
>For the FreedomBox to be really useful, you'll want to be able to 
>connect to it when you are away from home - it becomes your "personal 
>cloud".  It also needs to be able to communicate with other FBs.  These 
>both imply it needs a name and a way to be reached, which is one of the 
>things being discussed. There are lots of options!

It depends on who "you" are.

Some may actually find FreedomBox more useful if having a "Freedom of 
stealth" capability - i.e. explicitly _avoid_ it being easily accessible 
(or even detectable) from outside the physical safe place it was plugged 
in, except by specific other preapproved FreedomBoxes.

You are right there are a lot of _options_ - some of which may imply the 
_option_ of registering with the oldworld centralized DNS name, some 
not.


>If you want to be able to reach the box using standard tools, say a 
>web-browser, then it needs to be compatible with today's web: normal 
>DNS, reachable IP address - both of which require lots of help from the 
>cloud if your ISP is filtering your traffic or you don't have a public 
>IP.  If you are OK with using specialized software to interact with 
>your FreedomBox remotely, then you may not need such compatibility.

..or if you are ok with accessing via web only while on same IP subnet 
as the box itself, in which case you can use non-centralized DNS, a.k.a. 
Zeroconf.


>Same if you want to be able to send normal e-mail to the box, or send 
>normal e-mail from the box, it needs to be compatible with SMTP and 
>needs help from the cloud to work around existing spam protection and 
>ISP filters.  If you are OK with only communicating with other FB 
>users, then again, you don't need SMTP and may not need help from the 
>cloud.

...which is _optional_ so not an argument for FreedomBox to need DNS at 
its core (on the contrary it is an argument to me that FreedomBox should 
not offer this, but let's just agree to disagree on that).


>I tend to assume compatibility is something we want, and something the 
>project will fail without. But others may well disagree. :-)

I wholeheartedly agree - but _optional_, not enforced.


  - Jonas

-- 
  * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
  * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

  [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private
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