Why I don’t like XRI and i-Name

One of the main design decisions I made for the new system I’m working on is that I wanted to use domain names and DNS as the primary address handle, or default online identity. I’ve gotten quite a bit of feedback saying that I need to look at XRI and i-Names.

I took a look at these a while back and didn’t really care for them, but based on the volume of responses I got recommending that I look at them I decided to give it the ol’ college try today and at least sign up for it myself, so I went to http://www.gbtn.biz/inames/index.jsp and went to town.

Here’s what I learned.

XRI requires ~~brokers~~ registrars, which form the root of the address you give out. For example, my i-Name is http://xri.net/=jason.kolb. That URL is forever tied to xri.net.
There is no way to redirect that URL to www.jasonkolb.com, or display what I want there. To my knowledge I cannot stop it from pointing to http://contact.gbtn.biz/icontact/Contact?xri=%3Djason.kolb
It appears that the broker attempts to be the security layer between you and the rest of the Internet.
Putting up any meaningful content still requires that you redirect users to a URL. This means that your content is still hosted by a service provider
It doesn’t appear that I can route email thru this identity. Therefore I still need a service provider for email. And probably instant messaging as well, this is certainly not a valid Jabber ID.
There is no native XRI support at the moment, so it’s all done using HTTP.
I finally was able to set up a link to my blog, here’s the address: http://xri.net/=jason.kolb/(+blog). Some thoughts about this address:
- It’s ugly. I like jasonkolb.com much better, and they both end up at the same place. The only difference is that all of the rest of the addresses on the site are consistent with my domain name and not my i-Name.
- It will break every URL-input validation code I’ve ever seen.
- It is still intimately tied to xri.org. Xri.net is still a domain name reliant on DNS. The only difference is that I have complete control over jasonkolb.com, I do not have complete control over Xri.net.
- I have so little control that I couldn’t even make the default page for my address my blog, which is what I wanted. What if I don’t want the default representation of my identity to be a contact page? (I really don’t!)
- The general public will understand this address even less than a URL. If I printed this on my business card it would look like I’m into algebra, not identity. I will be completely honest, the first time I saw an XRI I thought I was looking at pseudo-code.

To be frank, this seems like an unnecessary layer of abstraction. I also confess to finding the signup process confusing. Look at configuration screen and tell me the average MySpace user will have a clue what to do:

It seems to me that this will require a massive amount of re-education on the part of the general public. Hell, I’m not sure if I even completely understand the intricacies of the broker concept yet. It seems like my i-Name is usable on any of them, but if all the links on the *Web* point to a specific broker I’m just not sure how that keeps me from being tied to the broker.

Something about identity providers just doesn’t sit right with me. And although I realize that domain registrars are basically needed to make DNS work at all, and they are providers, introducing another layer of identity provider on top of that just doesn’t seem like the right solution to me.

Now, this post is certainly not a slam on XRI, i-Name, the people who wrote, or the people using it (of which I am now a member). I could be all wet on this, feel free to correct me if I missed something. But if that’s the case then please also re-write the documentation and mabye the Wikipedia article because this is where it got me.

On the plus side, I now have an i-Name to add to my fragmented online identity

Share and Enjoy:

Jean-Louis Seguineau

Well, actually I believe your actual i-name is only =jason.kold
In the same way DNS uses well known name servers address for high level domain names, so does XRI resolution by looking up xri.net and then at a lower level i-broker.
In the same way you can transfer a domain name ownership from a registrar to another, so can you transfer an i-name from an i-broker to another.

As to the "look and feel" of an XRI, many people seems to find it strange. The XRI inventors probably lacked the proper marketing team at the time
http://profile.typekey.com/jasonkolb/ jasonkolb

Ah, Jean-Louis, this time it's your turn to correct my name–it's "kolb" (Inside joke)

I think the single biggest problem I have with the system is that they're ugly. But aside from that, on a more technical level, if I were to change registrars, as I understand it, every single HTML A HREF link on the Web that points to my blog at http://xri.net/=jason.kolb would be suddenly broken. I can change DNS registrars and within a day or two there's absolutely no discernable difference.
http://xri.net/=drummond.reed Drummond Reed

Jason,

First, my apologies for any shortcomings of XRIs, or i-names, or the current capabilities of i-brokers. All of us building this new layer of infrastructure are working as hard as we can to improve it as fast as we can.

Let me quickly answer several of the issues/questions you raise:

* First, "http://xri.net" is an XRI proxy resolver run by NeuStar on behalf of XDI.org. Anyone can run one, similar to anyone running a DNS name server (they all start with "xri.*"). If Boeing were to run an XRI proxy resolver, for example, it could be "http://xri.boeing.com". It's what follows the domain name that is athe actual XRI. So "http://xri.net/=jason.kolb" and "http://xri.boeing.com/=jason.kolb" both resolve to the same thing.

* Second, XRI-aware applications don't need XRI proxy resolvers — they will recognize your i-name "=jason.kolb" directly. An example is the FoXRI extension for Firefox from Wil Tan (see http://www.inames.net/developers.html) which adds i-names support to the Firefox address bar.

* Third, you can in fact control what any XRI points too — even just your i-name with no path ("=jason.kolb"). The problem is simply that most i-brokers (following a recommendation from XDI.org) set your default pointer to the contact page that you get with your i-name. Many folks are happy with that. However more technical users want more control, and most i-brokers do not yet expose the ability for you to change this default (it requires editing the settings in your XRDS document). However I fully expect that your i-broker will offer this functionality soon.

* The i-broker is not the security layer between you and the entire net. The i-broker can offer you identity, security, and privacy services, but you can also get them anywhere else you want. XRIs and XRDS documents are an open platform.

* XRIs can in fact serve as email, IM, phone number, and other communications endpoints by adding those service endpoint types to the XRDS documents. Use the FoXRI utility mentioned above to see examples.

* HTTP (or HTTPS) is in fact the "native" form of XRI resolution. You can think of XRI doing for the HTTP layer what DNS does for the IP layer — add a uniform layer of indirection for anything that needs persistent, protocol-independent identity.

I hope this helps — there's much more I could go into, but feel free to contact me via my contact page (http://xri.net/=drummond.reed) for more info.

Best,

=Drummond
Co-Chair, OASIS XRI Technical Committee