[tor-dev] Comments on proposal 279 (Name API)

[Alec Muffett]

>
> > I suggest that we require all address suffixes to end with .onion;
> > other TLDs are not reserved like .onion is, and maybe we shouldn't
> > squat any we haven't squatted already.
>
> FWIW it's not at all clear to me that this is a concern that IETF or
> ICANN will care about.


Hi.

My name is Alec.

I fought that battle.  I still bear the scars.

Nick is right. Jeremy is not right.

ICANN and IETF and (nobody mentioned) CA/B-Forum members will violently
attack Tor as being weird if it blithely ignores the rest of DNS space.

Also, the concept of the ".alt" domain has been discussed for a long time,
and last I saw will continue to be discussed for a long time.

For Tor to not shoot itself in the head and foot simultaneously, it must:

   1. stick to ".onion" as a top level domain
   2. not tread on the rest of the namespace in any way whatsoever
   3. be able to make credible arguments that whatever exists under
   ".onion" is somehow cryptographic, attested by certs, blockchains, and shit
   like that, rather than "authorities" which would otherwise make the DNSOP
   workgroup feel pissy

If I was in charge, I would say that we risk overthinking this, and it
would be better to:

   - mandate use of fully DNS-compliant syntax, including but not limited
   to: acceptable max length, max label length, charset and composition
   - declare a registry of short, valid labels, in the second-from-right
   position in the name
   - reserve "tor" and "name" in that registry (ie: *.tor.onion,
   *.name.onion)
   - park the entire issue for 12 months

Because some geeks are nerds there will doubtless be arguments about the
creation of a registry, about forking the codebase, about "I am taking my
ball and going home because this is oppression!" and a bunch of other stuff.

Hence "parking" the issue because this is all meaningless until prop224
addresses ship, and there should be plenty of time in the next 12 months
for people to think about how to fill the usability space with $PET_IDEA,
and to my mind the changeover period between 80-bit and 256-bit addresses
should be long enough that nobody need fret about it right now.

The Prop224 migration will be doubtless faster than the IPv6 migration, but
anyone who says the changeover period should be less than 2 years is trying
to kill Tor adoption.

    -a

-- 
http://dropsafe.crypticide.com/aboutalecm
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