>> How like LOCAL is ONION? > >Neither is a zone in the DNS or a domain in the DNS namespace, and both refer >to names for which a >protocol other than DNS should be used for resolution. > >(I realise the protocol for LOCAL is DNS-like, but it's not DNS, right?)
The protocol for .ONION is DNS-like, too. If you're running Tor, its SOCKS proxy handles the domain names, using the normal SOCKS5 protocol, with .ONION and .EXIT treated as special cases. The client software, typically a web browser, doesn't know it's any different from any other SOCKS proxy. It seems to me that we can make a meaningful distinction between domain names that are delegated from the global root using the normal DNS protocol and allow arbitrary RRs (give or take) which is ICANN's department, and domain names that are handled in other ways which is the IETF's. The only ICANN domain that isn't technically totally ordinary is .TEL, which was supposed to be a directory using NAPTR to map names to phone numbers. It is quietly slouching toward genericity with rather a lot of names parked by speculators, so I doubt we'll see any more of those from ICANN. I realize that the received wisdom is that any variation from the standard protocol is awful and must be eliminated with extreme prejudice, but that horse left the barn a long time ago, and enough people have seen it running around and looking healthy that we have a credibility problem. What does cause problems is name collisions, but we can deal with them more effectively with registries than by trying to stamp out pseudo-TLDs named .ONION and .BIT and who knows what else. R's, John, formerly aka jo...@ima.uucp, currently jo...@taughannock.tel. PS: Andrew asked whether .onion.arpa would have worked technically as well as .onion. Sure. But so what? _______________________________________________ DNSOP mailing list DNSOP@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/dnsop
