[governance] Vixie supports another root administration

[McTim]

On 10/10/05, Laina Raveendran Greene <laina at getit.org> wrote:
>
> Thanks Milton for that interesting piece of info. OK- so this is supposed to
> be another Master backup I take it. Isn't there already 12 backups of the
> Master currently running outside of the US,

there are dozens of anycast instances or what you are calling
"backups" running outside the USA. In fact there are more outside the
US than inside the US.

and am I wrong to understand
> that these are run by groups e.g. WIDE in Japan, RIPE in Europe etc who will
> not listen to the US gov.

I think you are framing the question incorrectly.

They 'listen' to the IANA run "hidden distribution servers" via TSIG
authenticated axfr.   In other words, the rootzone transfer gets done
from these "psuedo-primaries" (we don't use politically incorrect
terms like "Master" and "Slave" servers anymore).

Wolfgang's "doomsday" scenario (or was it nuclear?) was that the USG
could (in theory) pull a ccTLD from the rootzone.  This is one thing
that makes governments unhappy.   This is so unlikely, we can consider
it an impossibility.  But you are correct, it is talked about at WSIS.
 The USG does not have direct control of the file. It only approves
changes as shown on:

http://www.iana.org/root-management.htm

Any other speculation that the US would take unilateral action and
somehow "force" the IANA to change the rootzone is just scaremongering
IMO.  As Daniel Karrenberg says, it would be "killing the goose that
laid the golden egg"  He has written a briefing and faq that answers
many questions about rootserver operations:

http://www.isoc.org/briefings/020/

>
> As far as I understood it, the root was copied and run around the world but
> people who share the responsibility of keeping the Internet going. It was
> mainly issues regarding ccTLDs not currently under a government control and
> they want it back or new TLDs where the US and ICANN truly had any true
> control over.

Yes, mainly but many governments (and some CS folk) want to also have
the rootops sign some kind of agreement (a contract) with a central
entity, to ensure continued good service.  This is "rootserver
management", another thorny issue unlikely to be resolved by WSIS.

>
> Just thought it would be good to get some clarifications.

You are correct, it would be nice to have more transparency around the
root server system. The website (http://root-servers.org/) run by the
root server operators could be more informative.

--
Cheers,

McTim
nic-hdl:      TMCG

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