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

[Dave Crocker <dcrocker@brandenburg.com>]

At 03:57 PM 12/18/1999 , Milton Mueller wrote:
>I'ts a bad idea for WG-C to linger over the debate over the monopoly root. 
>It is

Excellent observation.

It's a shame you don't heed your own suggestion...

>I will say this, however. The most powerful criticism that can be made of 
>the IAB
>comment is that it pretends to address a technical issue. In fact, the 
>issue of

Or perhaps the problem is non-technical people trying to claim they are in 
a position to declare what is, or is not, technical?

After all, why should anyone heed  a senior body of highly experienced 
technical people, offering a formal assessment of technical issues?

>exchange, it is clear that both of them know their tech. One of them is
>emphasizing the economic value of diversity, the other is emphasizing the 
>price
>that might be paid for that diversity in partitioning and registration
>collisions. That is a socio-economic trade-off, not a technology issue, 
>and the
>IAB has no more right to speak authoritatively about that than I do.

You neglected to mention that the former assessment denies the long-term 
effect which you readily acknowledge.

It is even more strange that you interpret the IAB document as anything 
other than a technical assessment.  Their document focused quite 
specifically on the effects of multiple roots.  The technical effects.

>Indeed, it is probable that in many respects I have more knowledge, 
>historical at
>least, of this tradeoff than the IAB. I wrote my dissertation on the days when

Please cite your experience with designing and implementing changes to 
global, operational systems.

Then let's stack that up against the experience of the IAB.

It is probably that in many respects your experience will be quite far from 
on a par with theirs.  That makes your above assertion impressive, indeed.

>If anyone is interested they can read about how this debate played out 70 
>years
>ago in the book M. Mueller, "Universal Service: Competition, 
>Interconnection and
>Monopoly in the Making of the American Telephone System," MIT Press, 1997.

Ahh.  So the basis for evaluation is STUDYING a phenomenon, while ignoring 
experience DOING it?

>Now that I have plugged my own research I will urge us all to drop the 
>root issue
>and return to the status of TLDs in the ICANN-monopoly root. ;-)

Still an excellent suggestion, in spite of the nasty and misleading jibe 
built into using the term "monopoly".

d/

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Dave Crocker  <dcrocker@brandenburg.com>
Brandenburg Consulting  <www.brandenburg.com>
Tel: +1.408.246.8253,  Fax: +1.408.273.6464
675 Spruce Drive,  Sunnyvale, CA 94086 USA