[29492] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: public key service
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Shawn McMahon)
Mon Jun 26 17:43:01 2000
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 17:36:33 -0400
From: Shawn McMahon <smcmahon@eiv.com>
To: nanog@merit.edu
Message-ID: <20000626173633.A1187@eiv.com>
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In-Reply-To: <E136gLp-000DgF-00@rip.psg.com>; from randy@psg.com on Mon, Jun 26, 2000 at 02:23:29PM -0700
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
On Mon, Jun 26, 2000 at 02:23:29PM -0700, Randy Bush wrote:
>
> as are almost all the dns root servers. and, despite occasional hysterical
> whining on this list, they provide a serious production service on which we
> are all successfully betting our asses.
>
> > I expect that we will see good things happen in this regard in the next
> > year or so.
>
> how can providers help? and now, not in the vague future.
Spend as much as one of the root server providers does, on just PGP service.
Can't justify that because it's not as crucial as DNS? Exactly.
You want other people to spend millions of dollars to make PGP more
convenient for you. Ok, you want that. And I want $73 million.
We can both poop in our left hands, wish in our right hands, and see which
one fills up first. :-)
DNS provides a service everybody knows they want. PGP provides a service
not everybody wants, and for which everybody has multiple choices.
It's never going to be as robust as DNS, and even at that the A root server
lost track of the entire .COM domain just last week.
That took entire domains off the 'net for while, for large chunks of us. I
couldn't reach Yahoo for several days, for instance.
So PGP key serving, which not even all PGP users want or need, was down for
you. Is that even a PROBLEM, much less an unreasonable one?
It's like complaining that HTTP isn't robust enough because one particular web
page isn't where you expected it to be.
