Re: [DNSOP] on private use TLDS

[Matthew Pounsett <[e-mail]>]

On Tue, 26 Nov 2019 at 05:19, Roy Arends <[e-mail]> wrote:

> “ZZ” was used in my presentation as an example. Since this bikeshedding is
> siphoning attention from the important part of the discussion, I’ll try to
> re-focus on the question here:
>
> "Is it safe to use ISO3166-1 Alpha-2 code elements from the User Assigned
> range as top level domains for my own private use?"
>

Thanks for the context, Roy.  Speaking as someone who was not at the IETF
meeting this week, I found the earlier thread confusing.  But, it looks
like the assumed context of bringing up "what can we use this for" as "can
we assign this string in an RFC?" was correct.

It seems like reassignment of anything in the User Assigned range is
unlikely, however that is the purview of the iSO 3166 maintenance agency,
and not the IETF.  However unlikely it is, we cannot be absolutely certain
they will never reassign those, and so we should not include them in any
standard (note the lower-case) published by the IETF.  Even if the IETF is
just cut & pasting their current advice, I think it's unwise.

I'm also persuaded by Bill's argument that the IETF has already stated that
ISO 3166 has control over that bit of the namespace, and trying to take
back part of it is confusing, bad form, and risky.

Even though they're not specifically proposed, only mentioned in passing,
I'd also like to point out that the referenced potential uses of things
like XH instead of home.arpa. is even more risky, because that fixes that
string for a specific use, even if it's private.  Using XH as an example,
if that had been chosen it would run the risk of colliding with some
legitimate use of XH already being used by a User.. if that user then also
needed to interoperate with Homenet technologies they'd be hosed.

I think, instead of an RFC, what you really want is a Best Current
Practices document, outside of the IETF, that is simply a redirect to the
current ISO 3166 document.  Instead of DNSOP, I'd suggest you have a chat
with one or more  of the BCOP efforts at the NOGs.