Transformation Essay

Everyone uses the internet, and most people do not consider thinking about how it works. The internet has been made so user-friendly, that almost everyone can figure it out, or already knows how to use it. It is simple, all you do is type in the address of your desired website, and within seconds, you’re there. If this is too complicated for you, you can type in anything and you will get thousand of results related to what you entered into the search engine. When you connect to a website, such as “google.com”, you are connecting to a certain IP address. This address is a random string of numbers, which identifies the site. This is the same for many other websites, but the developers of these websites are nice enough to connect the address to a simple domain name, such as “Google” or “Facebook”. All these translations from IP address to the domain name, are held on a DNS.

These DNS servers hold millions of translations from IP address to adomain. Whenever you type an address into your search engine, you are routed to the IP address that is connected to the domain name. This is, if the DNS server is up. If a DNS server is down, any time you type in “youtube.com” into your search engine, you won’t be able to connect, because the connection from domain name to IP address, will not be able to be made. This poses a big problem, because if these DNS servers go down, internet traffic will be heavily yielded. Obviously, since these servers are so important, they have many backups, but it still does happen. Most of the time, the DNS servers crashing is not an accident, and this leads into the next problem.

DNS servers are too important to do without, which makes them incredibly susceptible to attacks.  If a group of  people with enough equipment and power take out an organization's DNS server, it renders that organization and many more completely unreachable from the rest of the world. Why would hackers want to waste their time taking out thousands of websites, when taking down one service will do it all for you. Not only can they disable the websites, but if people get access to the DNS servers, they could make it so every time you go to a website, it redirects you to the hijackers website. One example, is in October of 2016 when one DDoS attack shut down half the internet. Even with immense security and backups, it is still possible for DNS servers to fail.

My idea to fix this danger, is to decentralize DNS servers. This would mean that DNS servers would be hosted on everyone’s devices that connect to the internet. The idea of  a completely decentralized internet is something that people have talked about, and have started working on, but that is something that would be very difficult to accomplish. A fully decentralized internet would make it almost impossible for sites that you use everyday to function properly. This is why I propose the idea of a decentralized DNS server. Having a decentralized DNS server, would drastically increase security. If all the data for DNS servers, is spread out through an entire network of computers, it would be nearly impossible for the DNS servers to go down, with the amount of people connected to the network.

One issue with a decentralized DNS network, is that since there would be no organization running the service, no one would have more power over someone else to remove malicious entries. This would lead in an overflow of random websites and potentially useless websites made by automated bots to fill space. Because of this, I propose that a token system would be put in place. When you want to register a domain, you would have to pay some organization for a token. This token would allow you to register your domain, and would give you access to control it. There would be a public token, similar to Bitcoin wallets, which you could use to view the domain information, but not tamper with it. This would provide security for domain owners, and prevent anyone from being able to create useless domains for free.

Although DNS servers are heavily secure and have many backups, they do rarely get taken down. A DNS server going down creates big havoc and is one less thing people should have to worry about. A decentralized network of computers storing the data for DNS servers would provide a much safer, and more secure system. This means that there is almost no risk of DNS hijacking, or a DDoS attack on a DNS server, resulting in thousands of websites and applications being completely unreachable.

Works Cited:

"DNS Is Still the Achilles' Heel of the Internet." Dark Reading. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 June 2017.

Kerner, Sean Michael. "DDoS Attacks Are in Decline in Number and Size, Akamai Report Finds." EWEEK. N.p., 01 June 2017. Web. 04 June 2017.

Turton, William. "This Is Why Half the Internet Shut Down Today." Gizmodo. Gizmodo.com, 21 Oct. 2016. Web. 04 June 2017.

2 Mar 2017 at 11:09, Alexander J Martin Tweet_btn(). "GoDaddy DNS Has Gone Diddy." The Register® - Biting the Hand That Feeds IT. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 June 2017.

"What Is A Domain Name Server (DNS) And How Does It Work." What Is A Domain Name Server DNS And How Does It Work | Network Solutions. A Web.com Company, n.d. Web. 04 June 2017.