Alternative DNS systems and net neutrality - Was: Re: [governance] DNSsec and allternative DNS system

[Phil Regnauld]

Karl Auerbach
> Over time some of these boutique TLDs will fail, some will remain tiny 
> boutiques that are visible only within the scope of the root system that 
> offers them, and some will grow to become new members of the "every root 
> must have" club.
>
> This system permits natural growth of new TLDs without any central 
> ICANN-like authority.

	No, this system permits snake oil vendors to exploit gullible
	customers into believing that the TLD they just bought is actually
	visible by the rest of the world.

	Like it or not, the current root model is "the least worst".  Any
	alternatives so far (and I've heard about this for over 10 years) have
	had more to do with exploiting non-tech-savvy/naive customers than
	providing "political alternatives".  There's two meaning to "alternative"
	in this context: some people want a technological alternative to the
	hierarchical current model, but still believe in a unique namespace,
	while others are promoting, litterally, alternative roots and namespaces.

	The confusion serve the political purposes of the latter quite well.

	Some interesting work is being done on P2P and distributed DNS --
	but it may be a while before the technology is ready to do this, and
	the kinks ironed out.

Meryem Marzouki (marzouki) writes:
>  There is no such "natural" growth, taking into account the fact that not all 
>  TLDs, and specially "boutique" TLDs can afford "building a brand", which is 
>  very costly, or even are intererested in building such brand.

	Correct.

>  There are alternatives to a "laissez-faire", marked-oriented approach. Since 
>  this list is - sometimes - discussing global governance issues, why not 
>  elaborating and discussing a way to guarantee that any - "boutique" or not - 
>  TLD should be found in any root system, *provided* that they obey some 
>  simple rules to ensure overall consistency (like, e.g., a TLD string should 
>  be unique: a unique .com, a unique .org, etc., but also a unique .karl if 
>  anyone finds any interest in such a TLD.

	You're actually inferring what some of the P2P DNS projects are working on.

> And any other needed rule to ensure 
>  that everything works fine, technically -- and to ensure only this 
>  objective). It's typically a network neutrality issue.

	If you under "neutrality" as "not messing with your customer's
	expectation of what DNS should return", then yes.

>  Who would check that these rules are obeyed? Well, isn't this exactly the 
>  role of a global internet governance institution? Yes, I know, this requires 
>  a lot of elaboration and discussion, not that simple, but a huge step 
>  forward would be accomplished if only we could agree on the principle that 
>  such a discussion should be started.

	It's already happening.

> > Now some will say that "what if I get email from 
> > somebody at someplace.boutique-tld, how am I to answer it?"
> >
> > The answer is that "you don't".
>  [...]
> >
> > That's life
> 
>  Not, that's not life. That's free market instead of global public policy in 
>  view of the general interest.
>  And that's certainly not network neutrality.

	It's not network neutrality, it's "I broke the network deal with it".

	It's like emitting RFC1918 sourced IP packets on the net.  I would
	refuse those on the ingress to my network, just like I refuse mail
	from unknown (no MX, NXDOMAIN) domains.

	How am I going to validate ".boutique-tld" if my nameservers don't
	know about it ?

	Spammers reading this thread are probably rubbing their grubby
	hands at this point.

	P.

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