[governance] India's communications minister - root server misunderstanding (still...)

[David Conrad]

Riaz,

On Aug 2, 2012, at 1:06 PM, Riaz K Tayob <riaz.tayob at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Aug 2, 2012, at 12:07 PM, Riaz K Tayob <riaz.tayob at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 1. There is a double standard when it comes to technical accuracy.
>> Oh? Details?
> You mean you did not follow the debates as to whether there can be other roots? Karl Auerbach is fabulous on this at his cavebear archive. Mueller also has some interesting stuff.

Technically speaking, the architecture of the global DNS fundamentally requires a single root to the namespace. I do not think Karl would disagree with this statement (if he did, he'd be wrong :-)).  Where disagreements arise is how that singly rooted namespace is implemented.  The easiest/simplest/most efficient way to implement a single root is to have a single entity act as a gatekeeper for all requests for changes. This ensures that there will be no conflicts in change requests. However, there are other ways of implementing the same gatekeeping functionality: you could have multiple gatekeepers that mutually agree to never ever conflict (e.g., "hey guys, I'm going to change X, anybody have a problem with that?"), you could split the namespace to ensure conflicts can't happen (e.g., "I am responsible for any changes that start with X"), etc. Or, you could remove the "global" in front of the DNS and have a myriad of "local" DNS namespaces that people choose based on their whim. The problem with these other ways is they all increase complexity, cost, administrative overhead, risk of collision/confusion, etc. As a result, I believe it safe to say the technically best solution is the single gatekeeper approach.  This obviously does not mean it is the politically best solution.

>>> 2. Technical information should not be conflated with socio-political issues - such as legitimacy over the role of ICANN in CIR. This conflation is as abominable as inaccuracies in technical information.
>> I think I agree that technical information should not be conflated with socio-political issues, but to be honest, I'm not sure what that means in this context.
> Legitimacy of ICANN should not be conflated with its "effectiveness".

While I personally believe existence and an ability to perform a function does imply some level of legitimacy (perhaps this comes from sitting through too many presentations describing the wonders of unreleased software :-)), I don't think this is particularly relevant to how the technical community can improve the understanding of the technological underpinnings of the Internet. My question isn't about how ICANN can justify what it does, it's about how we in the technical community can get those outside that community to understand "this is how the Internet works".

Regards,
-drc



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