[dns-operations] [Ext] How should work name resolution on a modern system?

[Viktor Dukhovni]

On Wed, Jun 15, 2022 at 07:13:30PM -0400, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:

> I am of course fully aware of the commercial and technical issues that make
> it very difficult for the incumbents to address this problem. But that
> doesn't change the fact that a system designed to meet the needs of
> educational institutions exchanging email in the 1980s is really not fit
> for purpose for the needs of five billion users in the 2020s.

Less stridently, we can recognise that the service discovery APIs we
have do not have a first-class notion of overlay "views" each with its
own independent naming tree, and the applications running on top of
these APIs don't have syntax for choosing a view in which to resolve
such names.

The closest we have is the ".local" subspace of the global DNS, and
reaching IETF consensus on such special use namespaces has been
exceedingly complex.

So the DNS is fundamentally a *global* namespace, but one in which
businesses often overlay a single additional internal view.

I don't think this is so much a *DNS* problem as such, or that DNS is
not fit for purpose, but I do agree that requirements are shifting,
and that indeed home automation is served poorly by a global namespace,
and an overly centralised operational model.

Sadly, time to market seems to favour doing what already works, however
poorly.  I do hope that real innovation can happen in this space, and
better solutions found.  It won't be easy.

-- 
    Viktor.