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

Wed Aug 8 09:40:51 EDT 2012

Parmineder,

thanks to time-zone differences, Lee, Roland, Daniel, and McTim have already given you replies here which I think lead the question to exhaustion.

I'm also taking two points from Fahd's latest intervention: I have pared off all previous email in this response, and agree that we have come, or are close to have come, to a quite converged point beyond which we may be counting angels on a pin.

We need the mental powers involved and the bandwidth of all (including layer 8 bandwidth) for other issues. The cost of opportunity of this discussion may be about to become too high.

Yours,

Alejandro Pisanty

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________________________________
Desde: governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org [governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org] en nombre de parminder [parminder at itforchange.net]
Enviado el: miércoles, 08 de agosto de 2012 06:16
Hasta: governance at lists.igcaucus.org
Asunto: Re: [governance] India's communications minister - root server misunderstanding (still...)

On Wednesday 08 August 2012 12:35 PM, Dr. Alejandro Pisanty Baruch wrote:
Parminder,

it may be useful to separate your problem into two parts:

1. authorization for changes in the root;

Thanks for the kind advice, Alex. In fact, I have insisted repeatedly that I am only dealing with the second part as below. The first part was dealt in an earlier discussion in June with the subject line 'oversight'.

2. operation of the independent root servers, including their submission or not to an outrageously arbitrary and deletereous change in the root.
Yes, this alone is the issue under consideration here.

That, I think, will help you parse the apparent contradictions. We all have a problem with the first's asymmetric-power situation; the second is a fail-safe mechanism for the potential excesses of the first.

So you agree that independence of root server operators indeed serves as a 'fail-safe mechanism for the potential excesses' of the unilateral root changing power with the US.

In that case, you may agree that making MORE sure that the root operators are MORE independent of US gov will make the system MORE fail-safe or capture-resistant. In practical terms I mean what  if instead of the present distribution of root server operators, 9 in the US and 3 in US friendly countries, we have these servers distributed in a more geopolitically equitous manner - as I suggested, for a start RIRs of Africa, LA and Asia Pacific get one each, and perhaps one more in each of these continents at a reputed public technical institute. What do you say?

Lets first agree on the need and desirability of such re-allocation, before we go to the question of how to do it.

(apologies for some repeat language from my email to Roland)

parminder

(Fail-safe does not mean "it cannot fail"; it means "if it fails it devolves to a safe state", sort of when well designed elevators go out of electrical power they don't sink to the bottom and crash, nor just get stuck; they fall to the next floor down and open the doors)

(As a side: it may be valuable for IT4Change to recruit the assistance of some Internet engineers, for example by forming an all-volunteer Technical Advisory Board, if you don't find this too meddlesome. I've seen such an Rx work wonders in other, similar organizations elsewhere and it's a win-win. If too meddlesome please ignore. Again, happy to be corrected by those more knowledgeable.)

Yours,

Alejandro Pisanty

! !! !!! !!!!
NEW PHONE NUMBER - NUEVO NÚMERO DE TELÉFONO

+52-1-5541444475 FROM ABROAD

+525541444475 DESDE MÉXICO

SMS +525541444475
     Dr. Alejandro Pisanty
UNAM, Av. Universidad 3000, 04510 Mexico DF Mexico

Blog: http://pisanty.blogspot.com
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/pisanty
Unete al grupo UNAM en LinkedIn, http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/22285/4A106C0C8614
Twitter: http://twitter.com/apisanty
---->> Unete a ISOC Mexico, http://www.isoc.org
.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .

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