Re: [DNSOP] [[e-mail]: I-D Action: draft-grothoff-iesg-special-use-p2p-names-00.txt]

[Ted Lemon <[e-mail]>]

On Dec 2, 2013, at 10:16 AM, Andrew Sullivan <[e-mail]> wrote:
> And, behold, we have .arpa already.  We could just create anything we
> wanted under there.  I don't get why some new TLD is needed.

I wrote the following in a more private setting, but I will reiterate it here, in hopes that if what I am saying is completely idiotic someone will do me the courtesy of pointing out why:

RFC 6761 has IETF consensus, and does not propose adding new namespaces under .arpa, but rather at the top level.   Here's what RFC3172 says on the topic of .arpa:

  This domain is termed an "infrastructure domain", as its role is to
  support the operating infrastructure of the Internet.  In particular,
  the "arpa" domain is not to be used in the same manner (e.g., for
  naming hosts) as other generic Top Level Domains are commonly used.

Aside from the purely practical matter that having special domains live under .arpa would be more complicated to implement, it doesn't make sense. Consider .local—our main example of a special-use domain.   Would it make sense for .local to be under .arpa?   I don't think so.   .local is specifically not "internet infrastructure."   It isn't even DNS.   It's an escape from the DNS namespace, with different semantics than domain names in the DNS.

The other proposed special uses are similar.   Putting them under .arpa might be _expedient_, because it avoids the whole change control question, but that's pretty much the only way I can think of that it makes sense.