Deprecation plan for DNS?

[mcast]

In #16 (comment)

so as an alternate, IPNS can use the DNS system to create human readable names. Though this is a centralized system. So it sucks to rely on it to make human readable names, maybe one day IPNS will support something like https://namecoin.info/ ? or maybe another decentralized naming system.

From the point of view of a development engineer, this is

1. get something working
2. show people a working system
3. acquire more developers
4. fix the problems later

but from the point of view of a production engineer, the same events look like

1. create a userbase on a legacy system (DNS)
2. invent & refine something better
3. encourage users to migrate off the old system
   • possibly having no way to search down old references to names, or audit ongoing use
4. create a process for resolving conflicts of expected name resolution between old & new
   • presumably there will be name-grabbers on the new system, and expiry-squatters on the old
5. carry on supporting the old system much longer than you wanted to

Is it worth designing in a fixed life or deliberately ugly contrivance?
Or are we all so used to linkrot that it's not an issue?

[ghost]

Or are we all so used to linkrot that it's not an issue?

Not at all! :) Conserving links is a core goal of IPFS, it's the "permanent" in "the permanent web".

create a userbase on a legacy system (DNS)

The role of DNS in IPFS is two-fold, on the one hand it's just one of multiple pluggable naming systems, on the other hand it's part of the upgrade path from the "old web" to the "interplanetary web".

The userbase is already there (all of the existing web), and dnslink taps into that similar to the http-to-ipfs gateway. We don't have a better human-readable naming system implemented in IPFS so far, but we most likely will in the future as there's plenty of interesting stuff, e.g. blockstack, namecoin, and GNS from GNUnet.

carry on supporting the old system much longer than you wanted to

The different stages of adoption will all run in parallel for a very very long time, think similar to the IPv6 adoption curve, ideally a bit steeper of course :)

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I'd have a few more things to say but I'm still not sure I got to the core of your question, so do please ask away!

[ec1oud]

What is the obstacle to just choosing one of the alternatives (like namecoin or another one) and getting that working?

I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. The plan is to use ipns to map a long-term hash to dynamic content, and then use DNS to store the long-term hash right? I read that it's only a one-to-one mapping though. And how does the authentication work? How is collaboration possible?

If the author(s) instead uses a blockchain to publish the latest name-content mapping, that would make it hard to forge and yet mutable, but it would also be terribly slow and bloated, if we can use existing blockchains to guide expectations. So I suppose even if we use namecoin now, we could expect a further evolution later, when someone figures out how to make blockchains more efficient.

[ghost]

The plan is to use ipns to map a long-term hash to dynamic content, and then use DNS to store the long-term hash right? I read that it's only a one-to-one mapping though.

Yes that's what IPNS and dnslink are capable of right now. We definitely wanna integrate other name systems, but other things have taken priority. We're very happy about people contributing thoughts and ideas in ipfs/notes!

And how does the authentication work?

Not sure which authentication you mean but I'm happy to elaborate.

How is collaboration possible?

You can use ipfs-key and ipfs-key to publish IPNS records without a go-ipfs node.

If the author(s) instead uses a blockchain to publish the latest name-content mapping, that would make it hard to forge and yet mutable, but it would also be terribly slow and bloated, if we can use existing blockchains to guide expectations. So I suppose even if we use namecoin now, we could expect a further evolution later, when someone figures out how to make blockchains more efficient.

There's a few blockchain projects working on naming and integration with ipfs, check out https://blockstack.org especially <3

[jackie-scholl]

I think @lgierth might have meant https://github.com/whyrusleeping/ipns-pub instead of the second link to ipfs-key.

[madavieb]

This issue has been moved to https://discuss.ipfs.io/t/deprecation-plan-for-dns/402.