RE: [ga] DNSO ICANN board member

[Simon Higgs <simon@higgs.com>]

Roberto,

> >>The main thing I am worried about is that two alt.roots have different
> >>name servers for the same TLD.
> >>
> >>And this I don't like.
> >
> >I agree. But certain facts of life are here to stay:
> >
> >1. Alt.roots have been created as a direct result of:
> >    a. Network Solutions being granted a for-profit monopoly on the
> >       most popular gTLDs (COM/NET/ORG)
> >    b. IANA's inability to introduce competition to NSI by way of
> >       new registries and TLDs
> >    c. The .US registry's total failure to address the .US space
> >    d. Internet community dissatisfaction with subsequent processes
> >       (i.e. IAHC/gTLD-MoU/ICANN)
> >    e. ICANN's obligation to prevent economic harm to NSI from
> >       introducing competition
> >2. Reserved TLDs (BCP32) exist which immediately create an alt.root
> >3. Private corporations use Alternate Roots internally which often
> >    duplicates the name space outside of the USG-root - normally to
> >    secure the identity of internally used servers
> >4. Private Roots exist which for whatever reason do not have a full
> >    set of USG-root TLDs
> >
> >There is no guidance to establish checks and balances in any DNS server
> >which has been altered from the vanilla USG-root. I'm halfway through
> >an Internet Draft to try and ensure that there is a minimum supported
> >baseline (the USG root zone). Also I'm addressing discrepancies
> >between RFC2826 and BCP32, as well as other variations. The point is
> >to provide a common meeting ground and prevent a serious root
> >fragmentation from happening.
>
>IMHO the problem is not only consistency of the alt.root with a.root,
>but also consistency between alt1.root and alt2.root, which is, still
>IMHO, much more difficult to achieve.

It's not as hard as you think. The main incentive is to provide the best 
service for your customers. Therefore you provide the best name space. Most 
serious conflicts have already been resolved, and TLDs have even changed 
designated manager without problem.

> >>First of all, the intention was not at all to fragment the root and to
> >>start an alt.root.
> >
> >The road to hell is paved with good intentions. It doesn't matter what
> >the intent is if the end result is undesirable. Forcing the 7 CORE TLDs
>into the root without accountability to the internet community was
>undesirable.
>
>Do you have any evidence of the CORE TLDs having been in the root?

Not the USG-controlled root servers. No-one will ever know about the IANA 
"stealth root server". But they have been in the alt.roots at the request 
of John Gilmore (CORE didn't have a way of testing their claimed TLDs).

I do recall a conversation with one of the participants after the event who 
openly admitted what was planned out. First hand info is usually reliable, 
and it was a very reliable source. I'm not naming them because there's been 
enough mud slung here. Basically what stopped the root from splitting was 
Iva Magaziner getting on the phone and reading out the riot act. In the 
interests of everyone losing face at the time, IANA declined to insert the 
new TLDs, and the issue was passed off as an "experiment".

"Magaziner had just arrived in Davos, Switzerland, at 8pm on 29 January 
when he learned of the root server reconfiguration. He immediately 
contacted officials at the Department of Commerce, National Science 
Foundation, the Department of Defense's Advance Research Projects Agency, 
and others, "to find out what was going on - to understand what the 
technical ramifications were," he said. By 3.30am he had organized a 
conference call "with all the relevant players," he added, including 
Postel, who volunteered to end the test."
http://www.totaltele.com/cwi/199/199news11.html

> >Splitting the IANA root into two distinct authorities like the
> >IAHC/gTLD-MoU/CORE folk did was worse than starting a separate
> >alt.root. Users of an alt.root make the choice to use the
> >alt.root. Users of the ICANN root are not given that choice,
> >and their queries for the CORE TLDs would have failed 50% of
> >the time because the USG-controlled servers would not have
> >supported them causing instant root fragmentation.
>
>Exactly.
>
>That's exactly why it has not been attempted, in spite of what some
>believe.

The splitting of the root authority is well documented. The insertion of 
new TLDs in half the root servers was prevented as a result of the 
intervention by the USG (see above). There was even a thread called 
"rewriting Bind to resolve the new split root" in 
comp.protocols.tcp-ip.domains around 25-May-97 
(http://www.newdom.com/archive/newdom.9706.txt).

Of greater concern, I also notice that the IAHC-discuss archive which 
documents this time period (29-JAN-97 to 13-MAY-1997) is now conveniently 
missing from both the IAHC and gTLD-MoU sites:
http://www.iahc.org/iahc-discuss - 404 Not Found
http://www.gtld-mou.org/gtld-discuss/mail-archive/datedir.html - 29-JAN-97 
to 13-MAY-1997 missing


Best Regards,

Simon Higgs

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