[ga-roots] Alternative roots

["Patrick Corliss" <patrick@corliss.net>]

From: John Charles Broomfield <jbroom@manta.outremer.com>
To: <jandl@jandl.com>
Cc: [GA] <ga@dnso.org>
Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2001 7:23 AM
Subject: Re: [ga] Alternative roots

> On 23 Apr 2001, at 10:43, Eric Dierker wrote:
>
> > Kristy McKee wrote:
> >
> > > 1)  We do not want to introduce new TLDs into the USG Root that are
> > > already in use by other Roots.
> >
> > If it is competition, yes we do! I don't but who am I.
>
> No we don't!  That's a collision in the DNS and will cause problems.
> The business issue and the DNS issue are two very different issues.
> While both are important, the collision factor is a huge "Don't."
>
> Competition among registries is fine, but not in a collision.  There
> cannot be a collision,  period.  .BIZ is just an example - representative
> of any TLD collision.  It happens to be the one selected for this round of
> "new" TLDs.

Yes we do, no we don't... Generalities are such fun aren't they?
"We don't want collisions" sounds quite nice as a battle cry and something
that everyone would want to stand behind, but what EXACTLY is a collision?
A purist might say that a collision is when ANYWHERE in the world two people
typing the same thing could potentially get different answers. This Is a
BAD THING (tm) some would say...

ICANN (or anyone operating ANY bunch of root-servers -legacy or not-) has to
decide what exactly it is going to consider legitimate enough to warrant
respect. No, this is NOT "higher than thou", it is just common sense. *ALL*
of the alternative roots out there have their own rules as to what they
consider legitimate or not (to an extent). Just blindly saying that ANY
previously set up TLD *ANYWHERE* in the world is to be respected is just not
good enough. What stops everyone in the world in that case just setting up
half a dozen TLDs on their own home machine? (no, I won't go down the line
of argument of "why shouldn't they?", we're talking about expansion of what
exists, not creation of a totally different beast, go elswhere if you want
that argument).

ICANN, *according to its own rules* is not condoning, promulgating or
creating
any type of collision whatsoever... It starts of from a point where it takes
care of only its own namespace, and as such will not have two entities
running the same TLD within its own servers. The rules it setup to decide
who is legitimate to run ADDITIONS to its server, you know all about ($50K
registration etc...).

The alternative root servers have each and every one of them their own rules
to define collisions and to define what is or not worthy of respect. Just
saying as a blanket statement that the alternative root servers do not have
collisions is a falacy. Just in case, I remind people that to prove a
point, about 2-3 years ago -maybe less, not too sure-, I publicly claimed on
a few lists [dns-policy comes to mind amongst others] a stake to ALL
up-to-then non-used anywhere in the world alphanumeric combinations of 3-10
(maybe 20 can't remember) characters. So, ANY additions since then obviously
collide with my personal namespace (nameservers running on my own network,
but for obvious reasons the addresses won't be divulged).

Of course, they will all claim that my nameservers and my namespace don't
count as far as their own rules to how they manage their servers. Of course,
they are right, but at the same time they fail to see that ICANN can decide
what is worthy of respect and what isn't, what merits a claim to
non-collision and what doesn't. In other words, as far as ICANN is
concerned, there is NO collision. As far as OTHER peoples namespaces go,
that is their own problem...

If we were talking about IP address space instead of DNS namespace, the
problm would be akin to a bunch of people unilaterally deciding to use in a
private manner a bunch of IP addresses that nobody up to then had used (but
not using the addresses set aside as private address space), and then
suddenly yelling like crazy once they find out that the addresses they had
been using for a while (in an unsanctioned manner) were assigned to some
other entity. Nothing stops them from continuing to use those addresses as
they wish, but its not something that I would recommend. (I see this type of
scenario every day by the way, speaks a lot about who sets up their
network).

Yours, John Broomfield.



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