techno-politics was Re: [governance] Bloomberg - The Overzealous

[Karl Auerbach]

On 01/20/2013 06:05 AM, Avri Doria wrote:

>> The single root (system of root servers under a wide range of
>> control) setup is a result of architecture, not politics.
>> Alternate roots are technically not feasible, and where they do
>> exist, they either require their small number of believers to set
>> up a complete new set of resolvers without which the particular set
>> of alternate roots they require won't resolve.

> I contend that this is a techno-political statement

I agree.  And it is a self-interested techno-political statement; there
are several bodies - such as ISOC, IETF, ICANN - that benefit from cash
flows derived from the belief that the internet requires a singular,
catholic (lower case 'c') DNS root.

For many years there have been competing root systems.

It is very true that many of them have been run by people who care
little for adherence to written and broadly practiced internet technical
standards.  And many of them have been run with no concern for availability.

But that is not true for all - for example there was the ORSN in Europe
(which even had some of the legacy root operators among its members.)
An interesting twist to its rules was that it promised not to remove any
ccTLD even if ICANN did - this was in deference to the question whether
.su should continue to exist even though the Soviet Union has itself ceased.

And for many years both ISPs and individuals have run roots for their
own benefit or to control the quality of root-level resolutions for
their customers.

Well run competing roots delegate to TLDs with exactly the same set of
NS and glue records as do the legacy roots.  So all that a root system
really is is a portal into an array of TLD servers.

The big issue is not SINGULARITY of DNS roots but rather CONSISTENCY.

Inconsistent roots - ones that surprise users - are going to get the
same kind of user reaction as was seen in Monty Python's Tobacconist
sketch - in which there as a rather surprising Hungarian-English
dictionary.  Users will reject root systems that lead to surprising
results.  And the laws of trademark and fraud will insure that that
rejection would be backed by lawyers and law enforcement.

The definition of "consistency" is an interesting one.  Roots such as
the ORSN defined "consistency" as being "same as the ICANN/NTIA/Verisign
root zone" with the exception of the root servers themselves (and with
the proviso about .su that I mentioned above.)

But there is a more broad definition, which is that two roots are
consistent if:

  - For each TLD in common between the two roots the delegation (NS and
glue) records are the same.

This definition allows roots to differ at the edges, i.e. in the
"boutique" TLDs that they chose to carry.  But for those TLDs that are
in common this definition demands that those TLDs resolve in the same way.

There is no doubt in my mind that all sensible and self-interested root
operators would include as a core the set of TLDs approved by ICANN.
(Although I can imagine root systems run by some religious groups or
fundamentalist governments eliding some entries such as .xxx, as is
within their power to do.)

And sensible and self-interested root operators would probably not look
with favor on any boutique TLDs that have the same name as other
boutique TLDs, in other words use of a name is contested.  Root
operators, knowing that their set of users could walk away, would want
to avoid spoiling their offering by including TLDs that could surprise
users.  (The same thing would hold true to TLDs that have been found to
be likely to be in violation of trademark or other laws.)

What I find particularly interesting about this approach is that it
provides a natural way to walk around ICANN's new TLD process.  I
mentioned those "boutique" TLDs - well those are TLDs that are aspiring
for user acceptance.  What is a more natural form of "bottom up" choice
than letting users decide what boutique TLDs they like and what ones
they ignore?  Those boutique TLDs that get user acceptance will find
their way into other root systems and perhaps eventually become "must
have" items for all root operators to put into their core offerings.

This is how most products - and TLDs are nothing but products - achieve
market share.  The internet need not be unique in this regard.

There are, of course, business model questions about how and why one
might want to run a competing root.  It might be because one wants to
serve a community that wants to shape its view of the internet landscape
for those of its members who agree to that view.  Or it might be because
one is doing data mining of the queries to generate market data (does
one really think that Verisign or the US government root operators are
not today data mining the root query stream?)

In any case, our own lack of imagination why one might want to run a
competing root ought not to cause us to deny to others the right to try
out their own ideas.  The internet is all about the end-to-end principle
and innovation at the edges.  And what is more end-to-end and edge
innovation than letting people set up their own DNS roots an inviting
people to voluntarily use them?

	--karl--


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