Re: Revisiting - Re: Now: Next Generation Domains and DNS -- Was: Re: No More Central Authority: Not NSI/ICAN! Not ORSC!

Fred Baker <fred@cisco.com> Tue, 06 August 2002 21:04 UTC

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Date: Tue, 06 Aug 2002 14:00:18 -0700
To: Stephen Sprunk <ssprunk@cisco.com>
From: Fred Baker <fred@cisco.com>
Subject: Re: Revisiting - Re: Now: Next Generation Domains and DNS -- Was: Re: No More Central Authority: Not NSI/ICAN! Not ORSC!
Cc: Internet Technical Community <ietf@ietf.org>
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At 03:13 PM 8/6/2002 -0500, Stephen Sprunk wrote:
>Perhaps having multiple roots *with identical information* would be stable and
>workable, but that requirement inherently negates the motivation for having
>multiple roots.

from that perspective, we have multiple roots now - 13 of them - and call 
it a "single root". The reason we can call it that is that they are 
indistinguishable from one another from the perspective of the information 
they deliver - ask any of them for example.com and they will invariably 
point you to a .com server, and if you ask a .com server, it will point you 
to the appropriate prefix for that name.

As you say, what is being asked for is multiple roots with different and 
uncoordinated information. What this requires, of course, is for the end 
system to know all the roots it might need to ask, and have a magic decoder 
ring that tells it which root to ask about which name. This is fine if the 
TLD itself tells you which root to ask, but if someone adds a root to the 
net that is not generally known, then most end systems trying to translate 
the name will generally be unable to do so. I, personally, find that kind 
of service pointless - why use a name which nobody can translate into an 
address?