[governance] Comments related to the WGIG report

[Milton Mueller]

At 03:10 PM 9/08/2005, Vittorio Bertola wrote:
>A single root system is highly desirable,
>but, at the same time, having the option to have more than one is a
>basic "check and balance" on the fact that the current one is well
>managed. This is a very general principle over the Internet, 

>>> Geoff Huston <gih at apnic.net> 08/09/05 2:52 AM >>>
>The principle you espouse here is NOT 
>at the heart of the Internet, or any other coherent 
>communications system.

Geoff, I believe that you are missing Vittorio's point. Engineers can
often confuse layer 3 issues of compatibility with much higher-level
issues (layer 9, as they say) about choice, social alternatives and
politics. 

In fact, under the DNS protocol the root is wherever you point your
nameserver to. There is nothing in the DNS RFCs that says who or what or
where that root is. That is an undeniable fact. The Internet was created
by people _voluntarily_ and individually agreeing to interconnect their
networks and to share the nameserver data that makes domain names
compatible across networks. 

OF COURSE there is tremendous value in global compability. If we all
converge on one DNS root, then all of our domain names will be unique
and the Internet will work universally. But if people feel compelled to
break out of that system and start a new one, if the restrictions and
restraints associated with one system are so onerous that they are
driven to abandon that value and move to a new system, then they have
the right to do so, and no poliies or laws should interefere with that
right. Moreover, that is not an engineering issue at all, its a policy
issue.

And that is all Vittorio is saying.

Standards migrations happen all the time. No new communication
technology was ever established without sacrificing some forms of
technical compatibility at some point in the process. 

>You really should read through RFC 2826 carefully and then think 
>about _why_ the IAB thought it appropriate to generate this note. 

You - and IAB - should really read my response (which, unlike the IAB,
actually had to do through independent scholarly review): 

http://dcc.syr.edu/miscarticles/competing-roots.pdf  


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