Namecoin Forum

I've just enabled an experimental new type of "resolver" for namecoin domains:

One issue with the current .bit TLD is adoption, as only a small subset of users will install/configure a custom resolver. Instead, I think it would be better (or at least a good alternative) to resolve namecoin names as subdomains of different "traditional" domains (such as "bitname.org"). So instead of resolving, e.g., "wikileaks.bit" directly, you would resolve "wikileaks.bitname.org".

Of course, individual (traditional) domains are a target to censorship. But at the same time the community could "mirror" the namecoin domains under hundreds of different traditional domains. If a single domain goes down users can just switch to another domain. Alternatively, websites that expect such problems can in advance announce several alternative names (under domains such as "bitname.org").

I'm currently also looking for others to provide nameservers for the "bitname.org" domain. My goal is to have different nameservers operated by different individuals. If one of the nameservers needs to filter a particular result (due to local laws), it would then return "servfail" to the client, to allow the client to query another server instead.

The current prototype is using MaraDNS and a simple Python script that generates the zonefile from namecoin's JSON data. For the next "version" I'd like to write a custom DNS server (based on Python Twisted) that also supports the "translate" map method (which is currently not supported). In addition, with the current prototype there are some problems with "ns" entries, as the destination nameserver typically does not know what to do when the domain name is "bitname.org" instead of ".bit". I would be able to fix this issue by just proxying the query directly in my nameserver, however, this will only shift the problem to another layer, as, e.g., Web servers won't recognize "bitname.org" hostnames. Due to this issues I think that the typical usecase of "bitname.org" is to allow .bit users to make their sites available in the traditional DNS system, instead of providing a generic resolver for all ".bit" domain names.

Some further information is available on: http://bitname.org/

Update: The Python script for the generation of the MaraDNS config is now available at: https://github.com/sysfrog/namecoin

Good job !

One partial and a little bit ugly solution with forwarded ns is to resolve the host yourself (for example, resolve opennic.bit and www .opennic.bit, the 2 mostly used subdomains) and add them in your bitname.org zone too.

I've seen you edited the wiki too, thanks.

In addition, with the current prototype there are some problems with "ns" entries, as the destination nameserver typically does not know what to do when the domain name is "bitname.org" instead of ".bit".

Could you use a CNAME and DNAME records to map domains with "ns" to their .bit equivalent ?

In the zone file of "opennic.bitname.org" :

@ CNAME opennic.bit. ; to redirect opennic.bitname.org to opennic.bit
@ DNAME opennic.bit. ; to redirect *.opennic.bitname.org to *.opennic.bit

I guess your server must resolve .bit domains to do that.


Edit : you could even put that in bitname.org :
@ DNAME bit.

All would be delegated to .bit domains and subdomains.

Too simple to be true ?

khal wrote:@ DNAME bit.

Indeed, this was too simple to be true.

When you query your traditionnal DNS server for opennic.dot-bit.org, it replies "opennic.bit" to your traditionnal DNS server, and he don't know what to do with that...

gst wrote:I'm currently also looking for others to provide nameservers for the "bitname.org" domain. My goal is to have different nameservers operated by different individuals. If one of the nameservers needs to filter a particular result (due to local laws), it would then return "servfail" to the client, to allow the client to query another server instead.

Or your domain name could be seized, and a lot of ns servers would be useless...
Or a court could ask you to filter a subdomain on all ns servers, because you are the owner of the domain name...

To avoid that, we must have "resolvers" on different TLDs, but that mean people will need to add each resolver hostnames to their apache conf... (opennic.dot-bit.org, opennic.other-resolver.net, ...). No really simple...

A simplier solution would be to create full proxies (no configuration needed for domain owners).

Why doesn't http://dot-bit.bitname.org/ show anything???

is dot-bit.bit not registered..?!?!

gigabytecoin wrote:Why doesn't http://dot-bit.bitname.org/ show anything???

is dot-bit.bit not registered..?!?!

I have, but bitname.org does not resolve "ns" records yet.
Gst, i use this configuration in bind to manage "ns" (if that can help you) : 1. resolve ns hostnames if they are not an ip
2. add one forward record in bind for each domain/subdomain that uses ns

Hi, I've just read your post.

I'm currently a little bit busy, but I'll try to look into this later today or on the weekend.

khal wrote:

gigabytecoin wrote:Why doesn't http://dot-bit.bitname.org/ show anything???

is dot-bit.bit not registered..?!?!

I have, but bitname.org does not resolve "ns" records yet.

That's fixed now.

The problem was that I used the default arguments for the name_scan JSON query (which therefore only returned the first 500 results). Older NS entries already worked, but all entries past the first 500 were ignored.

khal wrote:

Could you use a CNAME and DNAME records to map domains with "ns" to their .bit equivalent ?

I currently use NS records, but your solution using CNAME/DNAME records looks really nice. Unforunately it seems that my DNS server (MaraDNS) does not support DNAMEs.

I'll look into this. In the long term I'd like to migrate to my own custom Python/Twisted based DNS server anyway (which will be much more flexible than the current MaraDNS setup).