Opinion: simple alternative to DNS

drcouzelis · 2010-12-01 21:47:34

There's been some nerd news recently about people being upset with ICANN and wanting an alternative DNS. (example at OSNews)

That seems like a whole lotta work to me. All DNS does is make "www.google.com" point to "74.125.230.80", right? It seems like we just need a web browser that makes working with IP address easy, for example by providing the IP address to a variety of search engines and popular websites by default.

Does the "supreme rule" of ICANN upset you? Would you use raw IP addresses instead of domain names? Is there something about this simple solution that I'm missing?

.:B:. · 2010-12-01 21:56:44

The obvious: how do you memorise an IP address like 23.17.475.9? What DNS does now is maintain a database, people might be complaining about ICANN, but if you delegate that task to e.g. Google, what guarantees do you have the results will be correct? In other words: how will that improve the already existing problems?

Afaik the main issue people seem to have is that there is a root server located in China that handles increasingly more DNS requests, even from non-Chinese computers, but it is said to censor those requests nonetheless, be they from Chinese or foreign systems.

Even though feeding the data to multiple 'agents' might allow people to catch the rotten apples easier, it wouldn't be any different to the way it is now - you can use different DNS servers now if you want to. Your ISP probably has its own DNS servers, ICANN has theirs, OpenDNS is there, I know the company behind the Comodo security suite for Windows has its own as well.

Arch Linux

#1 2010-12-01 21:47:34

Opinion: simple alternative to DNS

#2 2010-12-01 21:56:44

Re: Opinion: simple alternative to DNS

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