[Infowarrior] - Results: "Rename The DMZ!" Contest

[Richard Forno]

Here are selected comments from the 'Rename The DMZ!' contest I announced the other day.  No clear winner, but lots of snark. --- rick


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DMZ ---  It is a fantastic name - an inherently flawed architecture that is incredibly expensive and does not work in the real world. Single best representative concept in the business

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Point of Cyberspatial Demarcation (PCD)

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I'll bite: Mobius.  (maybe Mobius zone?  Mobius network?) The Mobius strip doesn't have an inside or outside, per se.  Similarly, that-which-we-until-recently-called-the-DMZ isn't really inside or outside, but shares some attributes with both.  And just as what you see when you look at a Mobius strip depends on how you look at it, what goes in the Mobius nee DMZ is highly implementation-dependent.

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Vapor-Lock Zone

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Communications Unrequited Traffic Zone

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The Taint. It's between the a---hole (the internet) and the... interior. *ahem*

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I agree in spirit that it's not a great name, although I disagree with this explanation - it's DE-militarized, so by definition there should be no offensive capabilities within the DMZ (even though there may also be no offensive capabilities outside of the DMZ either).  The name actually does make sense in the context that it's sort of a no-man's land between two heavily fortified lines which is probably what most of us military lay-people think of when we hear it in reference to Korea....

Nonetheless, as sort of an insulated area between the trusted internal network and the Internet, it always brought to my mind an image of a thermos bottle - the trusted network inside, the Internet outside, and the DMZ in between the inner and outer walls.

So my proposal is the Dewar Zone as in Dewar Flask, which invokes (at least to my mind) a decent image of what's going on. Thermos Zone might be a little more accessible, but hasn't Stanley already suffered enough from having their trademark genericized?

Since Dewar starts with 'D' it also gives us an opportunity for a backronym like "Dewar Managed Zone" or something similar so people can still use DMZ (although this would still probably be no good for military folks).