Re: [dnsext] Name equivalence: Another no protocol change solution

[Alex Bligh <[e-mail]>]

--On 13 September 2010 20:15:57 +0100 Niall O'Reilly <[e-mail]> 
wrote:

> 	I think you may be missing what they mean when they make that
> 	statement.  I don't believe it's the provisioning of a handful
> 	of equivalent TLD zones that gives them cause to say this.
> 	That can't be beyond the intellectual and material resources
> 	of a TLD registry.
>
> 	Their trouble with provisioning, as I understand it, lies not
> 	between them and the root, or within their own bundle of
> 	equivalent TLD zones, but between them and their registrants,
> 	to whom they want to be able to offer a group of domains which
> 	are dependably coupled, and remain so without extraordinary
> 	requirements for expertise and effort on the part of the
> 	registrants or their agents (registrars, DNS hosting providers).
>
> 	What the TLD registries appear to need is a means to tie a
> 	whole bundle together so that it can be managed by or for the
> 	registrant with no more trouble than if a single, traditionally
> 	delegated zone were involved.  Parallel delegation is easy for
> 	the TLD registry, but burdensome for the registrant.  Pseudo-
> 	delegation using DNAME in the TLD zone in parallel with a zone
> 	cut deprives the registrant of the means to populate all but one
> 	of the supposedly equivalent apices (apexes?).  Provisioning
> 	offers only these two approaches today, and so doesn't support a
> 	credible service for TLD registries to offer to their particular
> 	communities.

That's what I thought the problem was the first time, but it surely can't
be that, because TLD operators of any size generate their zonefiles through
a database extraction anyway, and I can't believe doing that would make
extraction any harder.

What was being suggested was that the requirement could not be addressed
by provisioning (and, to achieve recursive sameness, by registrant/registry
contract) because a third party (here ICANN) wanted to ensure that sameness
was enforced upon the registry by a mechanism stronger than any agreement
ICANN might have with that registry.

-- 
Alex Bligh