# Re: Hostnames instead of IP Addresses

Post by: satoshi on June 02, 2010, 06:18:15 PM

The current sending by IP is not very useful: it connects to the IP, so you'd like to use TOR for anonymity, but then it can totally be eavesdropped and man-in-the-middled.

The future plan for sending to an IP is to make it a bitcoin address plus IP, like:

1auaDZCFYqaGx4FKS5WenNfurk2SkoDu4h<someseparatorcharacter\>1.2.3.4<br>
or<br>
1auaDZCFYqaGx4FKS5WenNfurk2SkoDu4h<someseparatorcharacter\>domain.com

I need suggestions for the separator character. &nbsp;":" is a candidate, but IPv6 has : in it and that might get confusing. &nbsp;Something that's allowed in url parameters would be nice.

I want to use SSL for the connection, using the bitcoin address' public key as the cert. &nbsp;You would be certain you're connected to who you thought, and safely encrypted. &nbsp;The bitcoin address would not be used for the transaction, only for authentication. &nbsp;A new generated bitcoin address would be sent through the SSL connection.

Since it's authenticated, it would then be safe to allow the IP address to be a domain name. &nbsp;Some care taken that if a proxy is used, it uses socks4a instead of DNS lookup.

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