QFeb 20
Ethan Blanton
I reminded my #DistributedSystems class today that DNS is a global, decentralized, eventually consistent database with a continuous uptime and client compatibility window of 40 years, and I'm not sure that they were suitably impressed.
Feb 18 at 8:53pmWeb
Show threadflorian Feb 18
@elb it's also the only one we ever got to work. 
Show threadEthan BlantonFeb 18
@florian That's basically what I said ... stuff like IP and TCP and DNS is lifetime achievement material, and if a company could turn out something like that on demand they'd dominate whatever market they were in.
Show threadDaniel SchildtFeb 18
@elb @florian I remember talking with a random person on the ICANN conference in Helsinki (back in summer of 2016), and asked how long he has been on the Internet. He said he started to work with DNS back in 1984, and was still working on it in 2016. It is inspiring how nice many of the long time builders of the Internet are.
Show threadEthan BlantonFeb 18
@autiomaa So true. It's been years since I was involved with the IETF/etc, but so many just really competent and knowledgeable people were happy to give me the time of day when I was a snot-nosed twenty-year-old. Sally Floyd (RIP) and Van Jacobson happy to discourse on congestion control, Randy Bush and Geoff Huston on routing and autonomous systems, etc. I really believe the Internet we have today (whether we're doing the right things with it or not) is because they shared experience.
@florian
Show threadDaniel SchildtFeb 18

@elb @florian I was there on the ICANN event just on a few evenings, because I had a day job in a software consulting company. But since my friend was going to the ICANN event, I knew it was a good opportunity to see a small slice of how things are run globally.

Most of the attendees at the event were lawyers from countries around the world. There were technical engineering people (like those who had been doing it since the 1980s), but there were also lobbyists from Google etc. who were really silent about their presence at the event. Heard from a friend that Google mostly had closed doors meetings with different participants (while it was trying to influence decision making process in some ways).

Show threadflorian Feb 18
@elb oh, and it's federated.
Show threadReiner Jung 🇬🇱 🇺🇦 🇪🇺Feb 20
@florian @elb the whole Internet is federated. At least it's basic technology and services. Mail is a federated model, net news was too, the web was and still is to some extent. Big tech corps try to steal that from us, but we will never give up.
Show threadmedium rare birdFeb 18
@elb I typically use this to teach the zeroth law of distributed systems: avoid building one if at all possible. DNS is a great example, where if people are willing to compromise on global agreement on names (just like there isn't one globally agreed-upon "jeff"), then you no longer need a distributed system and can instead use something like petnames, emulating how folks refer to non-computer things (and how folks named computers on internetworks before DNS)
Show threadEthan BlantonFeb 18
@migratory I actually gave that speech on Monday, I think; distributed systems are like C, you PROBABLY don't want to use it. Most systems will run just fine on a core 2 duo you found in a closet UNTIL you try to distribute them. ;-)
Show threadSean CoatesFeb 18
@elb @evan And TTL provides built-in caching mechanics (especially permission)!
Show threadEthan BlantonFeb 18
@sean We talked about that, too! @evan
Show threadStewart TolhurstFeb 18
@elb We’ve sleepwalked into breaking that resiliency by relying on about 4 major providers of DNS services though. The protocol itself is designed to be bombproof and self-healing, but somehow we’ve managed to undermine that…
Show threadfleazFeb 19
@foxbasealpha @elb Same story for email :(
Show threadStewart TolhurstFeb 20
@fleaz @elb Part of that is down to spam etc - it’s really hard to run a mail service securely any more, so most people don’t bother and leave it to Microsoft or Google…
Show threadfleazFeb 20

@foxbasealpha @elb Filtering out spam works kinda okay and isn't even the harderst part of selfhosted/small-biz mailservers.

The much bigger problem is imgo that the big players dictate the rules you need to follow. I gmail says "your mail envelope needs to be purple" the whole world will adapt because otherwise you can't be part of the global email network.

And the fact that e.g. Microsoft throws away mail, AFTER they sent you a 250 OK is fucked up. Good luck contacting their support...

Show threadStewart TolhurstFeb 20
@fleaz @elb It’s all the bits you need to set up (as you say, determined by the big players) to actually make sure the message gets to the recipient!
Show threadfleazFeb 20
@foxbasealpha @elb And even when you do EVERYTHING, the other side will still drop your mail because somebody else in your IP range is doing some shit that hurt your IP reputation and they blocked the whole subnet... :(
Show threadStéphane BortzmeyerFeb 19
@elb And without even using Kubernetes or AWS!
Show threadgebFeb 23
@bortzmeyer @elb I prefer to use distributed than decentralized in this context. See rfc2826 and ICANN's privilege to sell .coca etc.
Show threadgebFeb 23
@bortzmeyer @elb aka «I can have your money» ;)
Show threadEthan BlantonFeb 23
@geb @bortzmeyer That's fine; in class, we discussed TLDs, gTLDs, some of the drama behind ISO country codes, what happens when a domain expires or is repossessed, etc.
Show threadAsternovaceaFeb 19
@elb how did they do this without MS Teams and Jira though 😔