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

[Karl Auerbach]

Veni Markovski wrote:

> I understand the (sad) history you have had with ICANN.

Sad?  Worse, ICANN's treatment of its publicly elected board members was 
declared unlawful by a California judge.

But you are diverging from the point of this thread, which is that:

   + The internet is at present risk of DNS failure or error - there is 
no body, certainly not ICANN, that taking responsibility for assuring 
the technical stability of DNS.  The chance of such failure on any given 
day may be small (although we have not really measured the possibilities 
of deliberate attack) but it is certainly not zero.  And if such a 
failure should occur the damage that would be caused could be 
catastrophic, amounting to the shutdown of the entire internet.

    Sticking our collective heads and the sand and saying that "it isn't 
so" does not make that risk go away.

   + Consistent DNS roots remedy the single point of failure and single 
point of attack that we have with the NTIA/ICANN/Verisign root.

   + Consistent DNS roots are viable and do not break any technical 
strictures nor in practice do they cause any technical problems.

   + There is at least one currently operational example of a well run 
consistent DNS root, the ORSN.

   + Consistent DNS roots can be set up outside ICANN without any 
permission whatsoever.

   + That such consistent DNS roots offer a way to expand the TLD space 
without the need for, or the massive expense of, an ICANN or any 
overlording bureaucracy of internet names.

   + That such a possibility threatens even the very need for an ICANN.

   + That ICANN has had a long history of belittling anyone who mentions 
that their emperor - the theory of the single catholic root - is wearing 
no clothes.

   + And that ICANN has done utterly nothing to protect the technical 
stability of DNS against failures and errors and has consistently chosen 
to ignore proposals for any system to monitor for problems or improve 
the time of recovery from such problems.

This abandonment of its responsibilities continues to this day: If one 
examines ICANN's current IDN tests - tests being performed on the live 
internet as we speak - one will discover that there are no clear 
criteria to ascertain whether problems are occurring, there is no clear 
assignment of responsibility to watch for such problems and to decide 
whether to terminate the test, and no clear procedures for terminating 
the test - it is all ad hoc based on plans that are, at their most 
charitable, merely preliminary drafts.

It would be quite useful in this world of internet governance to 
establish a body that actually does oversee the technical stability of 
DNS.  ICANN certainly is not doing it nor does it seem to want to do it.

		--karl--
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