shagie , 11 months ago

This isn’t quite right. There is no central list that gets replicated. There is instead a set of delegated authorities. That top most delegated authority may be revoked with repercussions down the chain.

There is no list that has every name in it. If you resolve test.127.0.0.1.nip.io its not going to a central list but rather finding out who is responsible for .io and asking that server if it knows where test.127.0.0.1.nip.io is. Getting a ‘no’ back from the registrar for the country code, it then asks where it can get that information and finds that it should ask ns1.nip.io or ns2.nip.io. The system then asks one of those servers if it knows the address that test.127.0.0.1.nip.io has and that server responds back “yes” at which point the DNS server that you asked may cache the result.

nip.io also demonstrates that anything that you ask for can be there and thus a central list is impractical. app.10.23.45.67.nip.io works just as well.

You can say that delegated authorities isn’t federated… ok… but its not a central list that everything replicates and working any censorship of the name can be as easy as finding a DNS server that is serving it. Though again, everyone likes using the big central ones rather than hosting and maintaining their own.