What is SohoStar’s WhereIsFido™?
WhereIsFido™ is a service of SohoStar’s The Red Pill® brand which provides domain name to IP address mapping similar to traditional Domain Name Services (DNS), provided by ISPs. The Red Pill® technology takes it a step farther by providing security ratings which can warn of mis-matched names and addresses when hackers “spoof” email and websites. Additional security measures improve robustness and limits weakness to the many types of attacks possible.
Domain Name Services can be considered like the traditional 4-1-1 “telephone directory assistance” where the DNS translates Names into address numbers. Often, when you seem to experience a slow down of your Internet, it is often due to the number of extra domains, advertising, javascript libraries, Google and Amazon analytics, and other side servers that are not part of the target webpage you were looking for. For every piece of art or special feature on a web page can be another “domain to IP address lookup”, even though http has been optimized to reuse Web connections, there can be 20-30 additional support sites that also need the name-to-number service, and this contributes to what you think is a slow Internet.
In essence, your DNS is a weak link affecting your online performance, privacy and security.
Normally your ISP provides addresses to their DNS servers when it issues your IP address, even if it changes on a regular basis (dynamic IP assignment). It is your DNS providers responsibility to protect the information you are given, to take efforts to assure the accuracy of the addresses, to defend against Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks, verify the integrity of the service and domain data, and to not redirect your requests to self-serving agendas.
Approximately 10 years ago, many ISPs established Web Caching servers that provided a “local image” of a remote location. When you thought you were reaching a site on the web, you were really redirected to their selected servers. For this reason, the concern of turning over ICANN to an international body was a non-threat because the ISPs have been manipulating local access for years.
The WhereIsFido™ service provides a configurable, internal address cache which speeds up access and control. The service has methods of determining an address:
Physical override
Hive neighbors
SohoStar servers
External traditional DNS providers (opendns)
Local ISP provided Servers
WhereIsFido™ creates multiple requests to this list who provide answers. The Red Pill® technology from hive neighbors and SohoStar itself, includes additional content scoring, timestamps, and network verification. Any responses are compared to determine the correct address.
SohoStar verifies the information that it provides by testing other DNS services, to warn when address spoofing or redirection occurs. SohoStar’s WhereIsFido ™ also provides services on unadvertised servers to distribute the work load, reduce single point failures or attack points, coordinate majority “vote” address verification to avoid spoofing, hijacking, and poisoning. Combined with SohoStar’s CidrPress™ , DNS responses can be sanity checked for out-of-country locations, or prior incidents on record.
The SohoStar service WhereIsFido™ manages the IP addresses for The Red Pill® Queb™ products that don’t have fixed IP addresses.
Many DNS services cache names and addresses for extended periods, as most Domains and addresses for big permanent sites have fixed addresses. Normal DNS records have a Time To Live value of one day, which means that the correct IP address might have been updated yesterday, but the cache is still operating on the old address. Each SohoStar device determines if it has a dynamic (changing) or static (fixed) IP address. When an IP address changes, each device notifies the authority ‘s WhereIsFido™ service of the new address. In this way, WhereIsFido can report where specific devices without static addresses can be reached.
It is important to note, that SohoStar keeps only 4 pieces of data about any customer’s information. A public encryption key, a device’s ID, an authentication password, and the device’s IP address. Only SohoStar devices can access another’s device’s IP, using its ID. In addition, The Red Pill® technology expects periodic contact between devices and SohoStar if messaging forwarding and updates are subscribed.
WhereIsFido™, and CidrPress™ are crucial in the success of Hive routing, privacy, security, and overall protections of individual devices’ personal, business, and government communications.