[dns-wg] DNS4EU?

On Fri, Dec 17, 2021 at 01:43:12AM +0000,
 Geoff Huston <gih at apnic.net> wrote 
 a message of 67 lines which said:

> The problem for everyone else is the incursion of a US private
> entity into the heart of the Internet’s name resolution
> infrastructure.
>  
> Over the past 16 months the number of EU users who pass queries to
> Google’s Public DNS has risen from a little over 15% to touching 30%
> 
> If you are working in the EC and you see yet another piece of the
> Internet’s digital communications infrastructure being aggregated
> and centralized by a gigantic US entity, then wouldn’t you be a
> little bit disconcerted?

I think we all understand the starting point, and the concern of the
EC. The problem is that they apparently don't provide a detailed
problem analysis. Observing that the market share of US public
resolvers increases is one thing, understanding why is another thing,
and which is very important to solve the problem. Was there are survey
about the reasons for this switch to these resolvers?

For instance, an important reason (may be the main one) why users use
US public resolvers is because they don't implement censorship
(SciHub, football events, music and film sharing). The DNS4EU project
is silent about whether or not they will have censorship (a
problematic silence!) but I note that they claim DNS4EU is a lying
resolver. Even if lies are initially limited to malware and C&C, I
have no doubt that the IP people (IP not being the Internet Protocol)
will, as soon as they discover DNS4EU, ask for censorship and they are
a very powerful lobby. If DNS4EU yields to their requirments, then the
project is doomed.

> So I think this is not really about the quality of the alternatives
> available for European users (and ISPs) in the DNS resolution
> market.

I don't think that many people switched to Google or Cloudflare
because of DNSSEC validation (unfortunately) but may be they switched
because of technical malfunctions. Each time there is a big breakage
of the resolver of an IAP, everybody on the social networks advise
"use 8.8.8.8" and people don't come back after that. So, even if
DNSSEC doesn't matter, robustness does.

> to try to stimulate local initiatives to improve the capability of
> DNS resolution infrastructure in the region.

Another challenge for DNS4EU will be to provide a quality service:
managing a big public DNS resolver is not an easy task and I don't
think that there are many european companies which I would trust for
that. (At least among the companies that typically win the public
calls for tender.)