Ed,
without getting too long-winded
- I think you're overstating the degree to which the Internet
protocols depend on DNS (with the notable exception of NATs
that use DNS ALG to fake things out). Users who aren't
behind NATs can still use IP addresses directly if they want to,
and more importantly, so can their applications.
Sending email to moore(_at_)[128(_dot_)169(_dot_)94(_dot_)1] works just fine,
and has
worked just fine for at least 14 years.
- The flaws in DNS notwithstanding, I think you're grossly
understating the tremendous advantage that DNS brings to the
Internet. Name-to-address mapping (via HOSTS.TXT and other
schemes) was regarded as an essential service even before DNS;
DNS made the job a lot more managable and has survived, what -
four to five orders of magnitude of growth in Internet user
population? Without DNS or something like it, the Internet
would never have been anywhere nearly this successful.
- A service that maps names of distant resources to addresses
is not a local problem by any stretch of the imagination.
- I agree that the Internet architecture should not depend on DNS,
but that doesn't mean that DNS is not an essential service.
We might disagree about the reasons that the architecture should
not depend on DNS - I would say that we need to be able to build
other name lookup services that work alongside DNS (rather than
having to go through the existing DNS protocol) either because
they are providing a very different service or because we might
want to replace DNS someday. And appliations which don't work well
through DNS due to performance reasons should not be constrained to
have to use it.
- You're grossly overstating ICANN's authority or responsibility
in either DNS name or IP address assignment, and also the degree
to which IETF was able to influence the structure of ICANN.
Keith