# Re: No "TOP" of the docuverse [Was: URC usage scenarios ]

Daniel W. Connolly (connolly@hal.com)
Mon, 03 Oct 1994 14:00:52 -0500

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    Message-Id: <9410031900.AA07352@ulua.hal.com>

    Subject: Re: No "TOP" of the docuverse [Was: URC usage scenarios ]

    In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 03 Oct 1994 12:10:17 CDT."

                 <9410031710.AA21142@void.ncsa.uiuc.edu>

    Date: Mon, 03 Oct 1994 14:00:52 -0500

    From: "Daniel W. Connolly" <connolly@hal.com>

In message <9410031710.AA21142@void.ncsa.uiuc.edu>, Daniel LaLiberte writes:
> Have I recreated DNS yet?

This is a very good question. I've seen a few hand-waving arguments
that say we can't use DNS because it's just about to collapse
already. But for the recrod, could somebody explain to me why we can't
just use DNS as the URC service? Folks are looking at addressing the
forging problems by using digital signatures. If you feel that it's
obvious to most of the folks on the list, then just sende me email. If
there's a good explanation out there that I just haven't read, just send
me a pointer.

> From: weibel@oclc.org
>
> A "root" or "top" server can be a single *logical* server
> without being constrained to a single physical machine, and
> without being constrained by the single point of failure
> phenomenon. Technology to support such services is well
> understood and deployed widely.

Ok... so my scalability argument is no good.

>A hierarchical naming system, such as the URN scheme, seems to require
>a logical hierarchy for resolving the names. A hierarchy has a root.
>How do we live with that fact?

In deed... what about the political implications? Who "controls" the
root of the name service? Who gets to have short, handy,
easily-remembered names? Who is the "king" of the URC service?

I think I need to do some reading on the "consensus problem" and the
various techniques to solve it.

But I would prefer a much more democratic approach where anybody who
can get on the network and compute, say, a 128-bit truly random number
can create a URN and publish documents and proliferate URCs into the
system.

Dan

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