Re: [wg-c] Initial Numbers

[John Charles Broomfield <jbroom@manta.outremer.com>]

(lots of snipping, I agree completely with the post of Kevin, and if anyone
wants it, go fetch the original, just adding a couple of comments)

Kevin Conolly wrote:
> "Roeland M.J. Meyer" <rmeyer@mhsc.com> 12/15/99 12:21AM  wrote
> (responding to my response to Milton Mueller's post:
(...)
> >There are no practical limits on the number of zones
> >that the DNS can support. 
> 
> Wow.  Fascinating proposal.  Then there's no reason why we can't level every
> man, woman, child and fungal mycelium on the planet have their own TLD?
> The mind boggles. Or does it make a difference if the tree is totally flat
> or structured in such a  way that the load on the root is parsed and 
> spread-out?

The thing is that there are only two *coherent* possible positions to take:
a) dns *doesn't* break with millions of TLDs (look at .com for proof), so
   therefore open the root and deal with it in the same way as .com is dealt
   with.
b) dns *does* break with millions of TLDs (increased latency, everything
   depending on just 13 servers, load not distributed, cache becoming
   worthless), so therefore limit severely the amount of possible TLDs.

Unfortunately neither scenario goes down too well with the "I want *MY* TLD,
and I want it *NOW* entered in the traditional root" crowd. Under the first
scenario, an independent TLD becomes quite meaningless, just as we don't see
strong business models profitting from creation of 3rd level domains under
any given SLD (look at ml.org for example), after all, why do you want
"yourname.something-else" instead of just ".your-name"?
The second scenario doesn't go down too well with them either, because it
presumes that the TLD-space is limited and finite and therefore TLDs can't
be dealt out to people just for showing up...
What they'd actually want is some sort of rules where TLDs are given out
freely so that they get theirs, but then block out any further expansion (or
make it slow enough so that they can make it rich while the bottleneck
lasts). Unfortunately, this is patently unfair; why can YOU have a TLD,
while I can't? (then the argument of "well NSI has their TLDs, don't
they???" comes up...). They'd want a halfway mark between options a and b.
The only problem is that a or b is a "one or the other" type choice, with no
middle possibility. Saying that they want compromise brings to mind the
question of "On what side of the road shall we drive? Left or Right? Hmmm,
can't make up our minds, ok, let's compromise and allow on both sides".

Just my 0.2ff and my 5 minutes worth of rambling.

Yours, John Broomfield.