Opening to competition the namespace infrastructure

WSIS Action Line C2 (ICT Infrastructure)
Facilitation Meeting
20 May 2009
11:00 - 12:30, ITU Headquarters, Room C2

WSIS Forum
18-22 May 2009, Geneva

Francis MUGUET


Legal Notice: Observations and opinions expressed in this presentation, as usual in any scholarly presentation, are not meant to represent official views of institution, coalition or entity.





GENERAL INTRODUCTION



Infrastructure of IP based networks = hardware and software components
Name Resolving services => ICT Infrastructure
WSIS Geneva C2.Information and communication infrastructure action line :
Governments should take action, in the framework of national development policies, in order to support an enabling and competitive environment for the necessary investment in ICT infrastructure and for the development of new services.









Introduction to class namespaces



Current DNS system = naming tool available for networks other than the Internet
Historical examples : Chaosnet , Hesiod never under the governance of IETF or ICANN.
Implemented with a parameter named class defined by the RFC 2929.
Each class = autonomous namespace / own DNS root servers / own governance.
The Internet => class "IN" / namespace managed by ICANN.
Chaosnet => class "CH" , Hesiod => class "HS".
there are up to 65,000 classes available and unused.









PREVIOUS ATTEMPTS



In the 90's, another approach to competition = alternative DNS roots
but operating within the IN class => a fragmented namespace.
Therefore in 2001, ICANN recommended the use of classes
Alternative DNS roots = commercial and technical failures.







CLASS ASSIGNEMENT



Requests for Comments (RFCs) managed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) ,
RFC 2929 => classes.
IN, CH, HS classes and 256 classes for "private use"
the other 65,000 classes not yet assigned, may be assigned by "IETF consensus".
If IETF were to decide to block classes assignments ?
=> Questions :
IETF , whose governance sphere = the Internet, entitled to assign classes ?.
Under international public law, governance and arbitrage between networks => responsibility of ITU ?






IMPLEMENTATION



For a class to be usable in practice, => DNS clients or "resolvers" as well as servers must comply fully with RFC 2929
Most DNS clients and servers do not implement completely the RFCs, including RFC 2929.
The field class is often considered as a fixed value with IN.
Software clients and servers => be updated => class = true variable.
No particular technical conceptual difficulty.
No namespace fragmentation. Users may use, at the same time, different classes
because supported by the same DNS servers ( except for the root servers )









IN PRACTICE

    Indicate the class with an extra field in front of the domain name.
    Suggested syntax = class% placed in front of the domain name.
    Eg: class 4d (corresponding to Net4D) , CT class (corresponding to the Cyrillic network Сеть => URLs:

    http://4d%fr.wikipedia.open
    http://ст%Москва.ро .

    In current browsers, no need to type http:// => typing ст%Москва.ро suffices.
    a person writing only Cyrillic, => class CT = class by default
    => need only type Москва.ро, without any ASCII letters.






Potential of Classes

The semantic web, = metadata and logic languages schemes (ontologies)
=> more relevant access to data than in full text.
Empower the semantic web by implementing classes, called semantic classes
The legal and technological innovation = owners of domain names are contractually obliged to follow a specific ontology, or to lose their domain names.
=> namespaces where metadata may be trusted.
=> redefine the search engines' market, to allow the emergence for new search engines.

classes could use UTF8 encoding, => simpler and more efficient implementation of multilingualism,
instead of the IDNA system, based on ASCII and transcription UTF8 - ASCII.









APPLICATIONS to EXPLORE
  • Cheaper alternatives to ICANN new gTLDs
  • Use of M2M software ( trust into metadata )
  • multilingualism / UTF8 and metadata => more efficient automatic translations. ( “Babel Web” )
  • DNS classes, ( governance of WIPO ) in direct relationship with the 45 classes of trademarks ( Nice agreement ) => trusted namespace for brands => legal and commercial security => economic growth.
  • DNS class ( governance of the UN or ITU) namespace of entities under international public law.
  • DNS classes related to Education, Culture and Science ( governance of UNESCO ).

DNS security, => decentralized security systems / each class
=> commercial competition and political independence .







EXPERIMENTATION



Experiments at the level of a country, a region, a city, using one of the 256 classes for private use.

In the experimental zone, implementation of classes ensured in :
1) all DNS servers of all major ISPs operating in the area ;
2) servers and DNS clients, servers and other web applications;
3) servers and DNS clients, servers and other web applications, of authorities, associations as well as individuals operating in the area :
4) DNS clients and browsers of users participating in the experiment .







CONCLUSIONS



Naming services are key components of the software infrastructure of IP based network.
The use of Namespace classes => provide an enabling and competitive environment
in accordance with the recommendations of the WSIS C2.Information and communication infrastructure action line.