Subject: [Secdispatch] GNS at dinrg

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 2020 04:58:04 -0800

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.
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!).

Melinda

-- 
Melinda Shore
[email-masked]

Software longa, hardware brevis

---

From: "Schanzenbach, Martin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2020 18:31:16 +0200

Hi Melinda,

> On 30. Jul 2020, at 14:58, Melinda Shore <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> Signed PGP part

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

> (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