Internet Systems Consortium Seeks Wider Input For BIND 10
joabj writes "The ISC is seeking some open source magic for the next version of the widely used BIND. Although the BIND is already open source, most of the work thus far done on the DNS server software has come from contractors, the government and Unix vendors. 'The goal is to move away from having BIND a heavily sponsored corporate product,' said BIND 10 manager Shane Kerr. Kerr is hoping that more eyes will equal fewer bugs, and that more users will go ahead and implement the features they've been requesting themselves. BIND 10, due by the end of the year, features a new modular architecture, one designed to circumvent many of the security woes that have bedeviled BIND 9."
BIND 9 was an almost total rewrite because BIND 8 was a horrible codebase, and in turn BIND 8 was an almost total rewrite because BIND 4 was so bad.
So what makes them think BIND 10 will succeed?
They're going to be more agile.
That's what the bind 10 egineering manager told the committee of architects. She did this with approval from four other managers. The committee of architects will now present their solution to a conference of engineers, and then they will then choose external parties to be contracted to do the actual programming (and "surprisingly" the cheapest acceptable external party will just happen to have a job at verizon ... which is why "corporate features" are so prevalent in Bind). But now ... They're "looking for input". Anyone here ever tried to give input to an ISC discussion ? It's a bit like bleeding to death while having your leg slowly feasted on by a pack of hyenas, except of course that it takes 4-5 years for you to die (don't worry, the chances of someone actually having looked at your input in that time frame is minute, after all let's face it : these guys work so fast that features like intergalactic eon-timescales dns support needs to be built in right now. After all, given their decision speeds, it's very unlikely that there will be consensus for another release before we need it). By the time it is obvious just how much input ISC egos can stand you will have a newfound appreciation for bleeding to death : it's fast, and a bleeding leg does not have an ego charlie sheen would describe as "much worse than my mother".
I foresee issues.
Screw bind, what's needed is a non heirarchical name resolution mechanism.
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Since this is about BIND, let me start the inevitable thread about the BIND alternatives.
BIND is the swiss army knife of DNS servers. It has a lot of features and can do pretty much everything. It's also a big binary and sometimes difficult to configure. CVE
Unbound and NSD are a suite of DNS servers from the same people. One (NSD) puts your web page on the Internet; the other (Unbound) looks for web pages on the Internet. NSD CVE Unbound CVE
PowerDNS (which like Unbound/NSD, is two separate programs) has a lot of flexibility with connecting to databases or what not to resolve a DNS name. Used by Wikimedia, among others. CVE
MaraDNS. I think it's the best one, but my opinion is a little biased. It was once a single program, now two separate programs (like Unbound/BSD and PowerDNS) Easy-to-configure; tiny binary suitable for embedded systems. CVE
DjbDNS. Great tiny two-program DNS suite. Hasn't been updated since 2001 and yes, it has security problems (I'm already taking bets that a follow-up to this post will pretend DjbDNS is magically perfectly secure). Zinq is a currently maintained unofficial fork.
There are many many other DNS servers, both open source and non-open source. Rick Moen has a great list of the open-source ones
MaraDNS is an open-source DNS server.
We are sick and tired of being threatened by our governments on behalf of failing business models (MAFIAA)
We want distributed DNS (like this: http://dot-bit.org/Main_Page)
(For non-techies: Think of DNS servers functioning like BitTorrent.)
I say KILL IT WITH FIRE! And while they are readying the bonfire... hunt down sendmail as well. Some software ages gracefully... like a fine wine... and gets better over the years. Other looks more like some over the hill celebrity who's had way too much work done on their face just so they can pretend to still be relevant and land that last big staring role. Give it up Bind... it's not going to happen.
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. -HLM
My input for BIND 10:
Keep it. ISC, you suck.
Anything is possible given time and money.
I want to see in BIND 10 (some of this might be overstepping...)
- integration with GeoIP as standard, or at least a way to build it plugged in
- integration with MySQL's threaded model.
(The above two are already possible in some form or another, but the patches are unmaintained or break DNSSEC)
Because of some political hotpotatoes I also propose a few new features that also involve needing GeoIP or similar.
- Peer to Peer verification. Instead of just keeping a zone file, the DNS should periodicity query the ip addresses it has on file if it "is still" that domain. Verify the private key.
- Anti-censorship provision (or working around braindead dns servers) and GeoIP/CDN selection. This would require more changes to DNS itself, but the browser could send a geolocation centric query, like "GA example.com (ISO-3166-2 code)" instead of a A record, it gets a Geocentric A record.
Competing against the pros is an incentive for some alternative DNS projects. Why break what works?
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Support for DNSCurve.
http://dnscurve.org/
lol bind?