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bluesky - RE: Naming via SDSI

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Subject: Global-Scale Distributed Storage Systems

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Chronological Thread  
  • From: hal AT finney.org
  • To: bluesky AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: RE: Naming via SDSI
  • Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 14:19:18 -0800


Lucas writes:
> I would add one more level of indirection, to a namespace provider that
> maps the
> name of the .com namespace provider to the hash of the .com namespace
> provider.
> I would eliminate semantic landgrabs for concepts like ".com" and give
> namespace
> providers proper names. So www.microsoft.com.realnames.myRootProvider is
> the
> full path. myRootProvider is a hash/name mapping I entered manually,
> realnames
> is a hash/name mapping provided by myRootProvider, com is a mapping
> provided by
> realnames, etc.

In what format would you (or, more to the point, Microsoft) publish
this name? Is it literally in this form,
www.microsoft.com.realnames.myRootProvider? What does the string
myRootProvider mean to someone else?

And what is "realnames" here? That is a namespace provider, right?
What happens if two companies both claim to be responsible for the
"realnames" mapping? Does each different ISP decide which one to trust?

> As you move from right to left the likelyhood of a collision would go up.
> myRootProvider must be canonical to the best of my ability to make it so.
> realnames should be very dependable. com would be somewhat disputable.
> microsoft would be fairly disputable.

What do you mean by "collisions"? Is it that the .com provider might
give out two different mappings for microsoft.com? Surely it would not
do this.

Or are you worried about two different .com providers, both giving out
microsoft.com? If so, then surely realnames wouldn't have given out two
different mappings for .com, right? So there must have been two different
realnames providers, both giving out mappings for .com. On this basis,
the only way I see collisions occuring is from the highest level, if two
different people are using different root providers, and so they might
have different .realnames providers, different .com providers, and so on.
But this would be a collision at the right, and would not increase in
probability as you go to the left. So I think I am misunderstanding you.

> The possibility of collisions is a good thing. For the most part there
> won't be
> collisions, because it's in everyone's interest to share most of this data.
> But
> if there are conflicts between namespace providers just let users vote with
> their feet.

This was the suggestion made earlier, that we would just let people
compete for TLDs and let the market decide. I gave reasons [1] why I
thought this was a bad idea. I thought you were offering an alternative
to this. Maybe I was mistaken and you had the same idea all along.

[1] http://www.mail-archive.com/bluesky%40franklin.oit.unc.edu/msg00088.html

> > One solution is to not have friendly-names for namespaces. In other
> > words,
> > TLDs would be hashes. You'd have
> > www.microsoft.14fvXAVGDabPPWqhYzZV2IYeIPE.
> > That last string would unambiguously designate a namespace resolver; there
> > would be no disputes possible, and everyone would use the same resolver.
>
> quite cool! Ok, so add another level of indirection to get
> www.microsoft.com.realnames.14fvXAVGDabPPWqhYzZV2IYeIPE.

The problem with this solution is that it is not a friendly name. The
goal of this discussion is to see if there is a way to have TLD names be
friendly.

Hal




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