What we need: local DNS daemon intergrated into namecoin

[grue]

Right now, if someone wanted to use namecoin, they would have to change their DNS servers. Not only does it cause a bit of lag with dns lookups, it also creates a trust issue between the user and the DNS operator. What I propose is a DNS proxy that is integrated into namecoin. During setup, the (primary) DNS server of the computer will be set to 127.0.0.1 (namecoind), and the original DNS server will be saved. Namecoin will accept all DNS requests. If it's a *.bit (tld configurable) domain, it will use the namecoin network to find a corresponding IP, if it's a regular tld (.com, .org, etc.) it will use the original DNS (stored during setup) to find the IP.

[dumain]

I think integrated might be overdoing it. A separate DNS server that forwards DNS queries to namecoind or the original forwarders would be better.
Also where feasible it would be better to present a native namecoin resolver. I believe there are already record types in the namecoin that aren't standardised
DNS resource records.

[grue]

I think integrated might be overdoing it. A separate DNS server that forwards DNS queries to namecoind or the original forwarders would be better.
Also where feasible it would be better to present a native namecoin resolver. I believe there are already record types in the namecoin that aren't standardised
DNS resource records.

The main issue with having a another program to handle DNS is the complexity it adds for the end-user. maybe a different executable, but the user is asked to whether to use DNS daemon or not?

[moa]

Probably needs to be kept separate for people who want to run namecoind but not the DNS server part.

[itsnotlupus]

If we're catering to different crowds of varying technical abilities, and I think we are, it would make sense to have the default behavior be the most "user-friendly", and have flags available to let the techies tweak things to their liking.

That means someone installing and running namecoin without any effort to understand how it works should end up with a system that knows how to resolve as many things as namecoin supports as possible, out of the box.

The more technical users would quickly find out about the program startup flags, and add, say, a --no-dns flag and others as needed.

[imperi]

I think it should be integrated. The DNS stuff should be invisible to the user unless they want an advanced configuration.

[moa]

Dot-bit DNS could be done by "installing" a suitably configured Proxy management Browser Plug-in ... FoxyProxy, etc

Just make the pre-configured browser plug-in install part of the "integrated" Namecoin install.

[khal]

Dot-bit DNS could be done by "installing" a suitably configured Proxy management Browser Plug-in ... FoxyProxy, etc

Just make the pre-configured browser plug-in install part of the "integrated" Namecoin install.

Yes, that's the way i see it.

[Tuxavant]

What if we didn't have to muck with DNS at all? What if there was a proxy service end-users could install that would handle the namecoin/IP lookups and forward the browser requests to the correct host?

Example:

User points browser to local namecoin/web proxy service
user browses milf.bit
proxy passes all non-.bit domains out directly, otherwise, the proxy will query the namecoin chain for the right ip and forward it on as expected.

All the user would have to do is point their browser to a local socket and everything just "works"