An alternative DNS

Peter Sunde, formerly of the Pirate Bay, has announced his intention to create an alternative DNS infrastructure so that the Internet is no longer under the control of the authorities - particularly those in the US.

Perhaps prompted by the recent taking down of 82 websites in the US accused of selling counterfeit goods or infringing copyright, Sunde tweeted:

“Hello all #isp of the world. We’re going to add a new competing root-server since we’re tired of #ICANN. Please contact me to help.”

This provoked significant interest leading to the creation of the Dot-P2P project. The P2P DNS concept will use peer-to-peer technology and the .p2p TLD to route DNS queries between peers, rather than definitive servers.

So far it has not gone much beyond  a temporary blog, a wiki and the IRC channels #dns-p2p and #dot-p2p on EfNet.

But if the people now being attracted to the idea can solve the technical issues - such as P2P networking’s issues with latency and availability - then it could be a key technology in creating new darknets and eliminating the power the US currently wields over the Internet.