One TLD or several TLD [SOLVED : one for now, more later]

[khal]

Current namecoin software is currently designed to operate without any tld.
That's why we could choose .bit or .web, etc. To remain compatible with existing dns technologies, we need to choose one.

But, i think then namecoin software should be designed to allow several TLDs. I don't want to allow people to choose any tld they like, because it woulnd't be manageable by dns servers, but, a predefined list of TLD would be ok.

We could start with one TLD, and we would have the possibility to add others later, when the system will be more stable. What would be requiered is an update of the namecoin software.

[gsan]

I'm not sure an update of namecoin software is even needed. Records are interpreted by the resolvers (DNS bridges and proxies), and it's up to the implementors and community to decide what will be the case.

I agree that we have to interpret records to map to only one TLD. I've advocated .c, but the community seems invested on .bit currently. We have one DNS that resolves only .bit and one that mirrors to .bit, .n, .b and .c. I'm impartial on which TLD will stay, but there needs to be only one default TLD, IMO.

Also currently, registration management interfaces (be it web services or gui tools) is sorely needed. I think we should stay with a default TLD until we have a living ecosystem of tools. Furthermore, being able to create domains with our default TLD through OpenNIC will be a good step towards expansion (as suggested on the wiki).

In the future, the standard can be extended to include other TLDs through a different naming scheme. For instance, while "d/name" maps to "name.bit", "dc/name" could map to "name.c".

[gigabytecoin]

I think we should stick to promoting a single tld right now.

It would be easier to promote .bit than to promote .bit, .web, .etc,...

[khal]

Currently, you can register whatever you want for the prefix :
- dc/test
- dweb/test
- xxx/test
- yyy/test

So, to add a new TLD, the community must agree for it and update all DNS servers and proxy ? Why not.

This allows me to use namecoin for whatever i want (create a new tld now, register .com domains, register other things than domain names too). I'm curious to see what future projects will be linked to namecoin :p

I think we should stick to promoting a single tld right now.

It would be easier to promote .bit than to promote .bit, .web, .etc,...

Indeed.

[shooter_mcgavin]

I'd definitely focus on one TLD for the time being. We need momentum & offering multiple TLD's would only saturate the flame before it can really take off. The selling point is the decentralized nature, not being able to register tons of cool, custom domains (at least for now).

[gsan]

I seems a single and default TLD is very much the consensus.

Currently, you can register whatever you want for the prefix :
- dc/test
- dweb/test
- xxx/test
- yyy/test

So, to add a new TLD, the community must agree for it and update all DNS servers and proxy ? Why not.

Though, I would recommend people not to register names with this scheme, at least for the time being, since it's not a standardized spec (it's made up on the fly as an example) and may not be ever supported.

[Nesetalis]

will this support subdomain names?
also what about a standard DNS to namecoin proxy similar to the tor2web.org site.. which allows you to access the .onion TLD without having tor installed.

[khal]

will this support subdomain names?

It's already the case.
Either you delegate your domain to ns servers and you can configure subdomains on your domain hosting, or you can configure subdomains in namecoin.
More details here : http://dot-bit.org/HowToRegisterAndConf ... our_domain

also what about a standard DNS to namecoin proxy similar to the tor2web.org site.. which allows you to access the .onion TLD without having tor installed.

If you don't create that website, someone else may do :p

[Nesetalis]

sadly my expertise is not in network design D: Though there might be other areas i could help. Maybe.. :p

as for domains, i havnt gotten a namecoin yet to play with anything :p perhaps tomorrow.

[davux]

We're thinking in a biased way here, because of tens of years of DNS, centralized training.

What if the traditional web didn't have any TLDs? For example, instead of connecting to "mtgox.com", we would simply use "mtgox".

It would have been easier for everyone, but centralization would have been the big issue: having only one root would mean all the control (and the money) would belong to a single authority, which is not desirable. Hence the many TLDs in existence: artificially reduce the centralization that DNS suffers at root level.

Now, this problem doesn't exist with Namecoin. The system is already decentralized, so why bother with TLDs? TLDs with Namecoin would be purely "visual", actually the authority would be the same: every single computer connected to the network. With the traditional DNS system, foo.com and foo.net are in fact attributed by totally different authorities, but .bit and (say) .bot would be handled in exactly the same way.

Ideally, even the ".bit" part shouldn't be used at all. As a matter of fact, in many namecoin-related tools we don't even use them. It's only needed when using traditional DNS tools.

So, my take: let's not use TLDs (because they don't have any meaning in an already decentralized system), continue to say ".bit" when we need to specify we're dealing with Namecoin domains, and keep that suffix off when it's not needed.