Re: [wg-c] IAB Technical Comment on the Unique DNS Root

[Karl Auerbach <karl@CaveBear.com>]

> ...If you have two powerful places from where to download the
> root-zone and they contain conflicting information on different TLDs (for
> example one has a ".web" that points to IOD, the other has a ".web" that
> points to CORE), then THATS when you get problems.

I don't have two conflicting sources - I use but one root system, not two,
not three...

Thus I see but one version of .web no matter how many there are.

Now that could mean that somebody sends me a name intended to be from
another version of .web.

OK.  So what?  The harm is that that other person and I don't communicate.
I can't say that that is any different than what would have happened ten
years ago (in those largely pre-e-mail days) if I had handed out e-mail
addresses and said "drop me a note".

As I mention in my writeup at
http://www.cavebear.com/cavebear/growl/issue_2.htm#multiple_roots there is
a chicken-egg situation in which new TLDs have to achieve critical mass
and stability to become viable so that root system operators will feel
comfortable placing those TLDs in their inventory.  As an entrapreanauer
(one who can't spell the word ;-) I'd suggest that this is largely a
matter of marketing (i.e. creative use of money.)

As for your comment about "the one" root zone.  I can only ask: Why?  And
why must it be ICANN's?

By analogy, must we have but one telephone directory?  Isn't the world
running happily with multiple flavors of telephone books, CD-rom phone
directories, 411 services, Palm Pilots, and scraps of papers with
jotted-down notes?

Similarly, it certainly seems to me that Humpty Dumpty was right -- that I
ought to be free to name things as I chose.  Any failure to communicate as
a result is going to redound to my detriment and my communications-peers
and I are free to resolve the situation in any way that we might like.

I'd suggest that the next step in the single-root chain of logic is that
all communications on the net be in English - we certainly don't want to
allow an English speaker to not be able to communicate with a speaker of
Urdu.

		--karl--