Comment by akerl_
5 years ago
Do you have a citation for that? Sourcing from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828702 , they don’t reverse their global stance for large providers. Their stance is ~”Including client IP via EDNS violates our goal of maximizing user data privacy”, and what they’re working on with other large-scale providers is a way to improve geo-resolution without weakening user privacy.
Exactly on your link, just ctrl-F for "Netflix":
"We are working with the small number of networks with a higher network/ISP density than Cloudflare (e.g., Netflix, Facebook, Google/YouTube) to come up with an EDNS IP Subnet alternative that gets them the information they need for geolocation".
Well, I might be inaccurate in saying "exactly the same protocol as before", but it is clear that what was available to every webmaster via EDNS, now available only to members of a closed club, via good old EDNS or a proprietary alternative. The latter is more likely, not because of privacy-caring, but because they could now charge it as license fee for using private protocol.
EDNS is an optional field. Client subnet is an optional part of that optional field. It’s relatively new compared to DNS as a whole, and most “webmasters” don’t make active use of it.
The quote you pulled is about Cloudflare’s efforts to build a better standard. They’re talking to the people with the expertise and interest to build that standard. You’ve inferred “proprietary” and “closed club”, and a ton of motive besides, and you’ve copy-pasted that speculation as if it were fact into multiple comment trees.
1. EDNS is needless when you are using your provider DNS. It is needed for public DNS servers. So it is optional, as is needless most of the time. Before launching Cloudflare DNS, the biggest public DNS service was Googles, who developed and implemented EDNS. Then comes Cloudflare and "the people with the expertise and interest" to rethink that.
2. I assume that commercial companies are here to make money, not "a better future" (besides the better future for the shareholders). If they implement something, the first question is how do they make money with it.
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I think they mean they're working on an alternative standard, not anywhere near "we give you an API to match DNS requests to origin city". These talks might have been as simple as "we'll give you [and everyone] geoip information for the datacenters we request from based on IP, and you can load balance off that".
I do not think it has much sense if the standard is the good-old-EDNS or something new, for example supplying city name in a text form instead of hiding last bits of IP as EDNS does.
Google's 8.8.8.8 provides client-ip via EDNS to every webmaster. Zeroing at least 8 bits for privacy - it was made with privacy in mind too. The privacy could be tuned by zeroing 10+ instead of 8+ bits, etc. There is nothing wrong with EDNS and privacy, which would require to abandon ENDS with privacy stancas.
And Google provides that FOR FREE. To everyone.
How can I - as webmaster - get similar info from 1.1.1.1? Not being a Silicon Valley megacorp.
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Exactly.