At 22:42 08/09/2008, Bret Fausett wrote:
of domain names. Based on the current community experience, we expect the DNS to be [phased] out in favor of overlay networks which obtain their names from the dynamically shaped digital neighbourhoods.
I would be interested in hearing more about this, especially in what you define as the time horizon for these expected changes.
Personally, I don't agree with the conclusion. My belief is that the DNS will not be phased out in the foreseeable future, even though users may, as practical matter, rely on alternative methods of navigation for the web. But I'm certainly eager to hear alternative views.
Brett, do not worry. DNS is just a computer oriented genetive syntax. You can replace "." by " of ". What may not survive very long is the ICANN idea to make a business out of it, selling people their own names. Alternative syntaxes can exist and be used by other services than trasporting access like the Internet. What may not survive very long either is the odd idea to make it a power tool, centraliszing it. What is expressed in the concept to localized roots matrix, should not be a real problem should IETF be able to use classes correctly. However the limited number of available classes (we have 64.000 where we would probably need 10.000.000 times more), there is a possibility to support them which is EDNS. Just think of the post-codes. Today, the DNS names are only organised in one single Washington neigborhood. You can consider them local to some other place, or related to you. This is the difference between a centralised, decentralised and distributed systems. This does not change the names of the places and people. Just that you relate them to other kinds of identification spots. jfc