[PLUG] GAIM and MSN

[Jason Van Clere]

Thus spoke Jeme A Brelin, on Wed, 22 Oct 2003 11:06:31 -0700 (PDT):

> It could be managed individually in a similar way to DNS, I suppose.
> 
> Imagine that you register a name and the rootservers tell the client
> your public key and then you authenticate with the server via your
> private key.
> 
> However, at that point you may as well just use an email address that
> has a public key registered with one of the standard keyservers.

That's good thinking, pretty much what I've been chewing on.

Now, the domain names in email addresses wouldn't be such a lame idea if end users were compelled to purchase their own domains.  The trick is making it mega-simple and not requiring any other services.  Probably the ISP would offer to set it up (some probably do this now), billing an extra $20/year or so.  They could then point these "personal domains" toward their own email servers, etc., and when users change locations, their new ISPs would transfer the domain.

At this point, it should be possible to use regular email addresses in a decentralized jabber-like system, using DNS to locate the server or servers to which each IM user connects--or perhaps, to which a particular domain connects.  Which would mean users on any particular domain would all have to use the same IM server(s), as with email; but still, one address for both email and IM sounds pretty good, from a user perspective.

But I'm just thinking out loud.  Feel free to take pot shots at this, or to simplify it to the point of absurdity.

--Jason V. C.