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worth reading A REPLY FROM Vixie on Neustar to create their own DNS root and own universe to rule
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Sat, 1 Oct 2005 13:42:15 -0400
Begin forwarded message: From: Paul Vixie <paul () vix com> Date: October 1, 2005 10:44:02 AM EDT To: "Strata R. Chalup" <strata () virtual net> Cc: dave () farber netSubject: Re: Fwd: [IP] more on Neustar to create their own DNS root and own universe to rule
strata,someone was kind enough to forward this to me. note that i no longer work at MFN (since 2002, that is) and that vixie () mfnx net will no longer reach me.
dave,you may forward this to I-P if you find it entertaining or otherwise useful.
paul # > From: "Strata R. Chalup" <strata () virtual net> # > Date: September 30, 2005 6:47:22 PM EDT # > To: dave () farber net, vixie () mfnx net# > Subject: Re: [IP] more on Neustar to create their own DNS root and own
# > universe to rule # ># > I'm quite curious to hear what Paul Vixie thinks of this. Back in the # > early 90's, and then again recently, I floated the idea that bind should # > incorporate the idea of alternate root servers. My motivation was more # > political than technical-- currently it is frighteningly easy to make an
# > entire domain disappear, silencing dissent and politically-incorrect# > points of view. I pointed out that with all of the joyful hype about the # > 'net bringing democracy to the masses, it wasn't going to happen if there # > was a single hierarchy out of which one could be plucked, redirected, etc
# > etc. # ># > Vixie's response, while eminiently polite, was very passionate: his vision # > of the Internet was that it was one space, and support for alternate roots # > would destroy this. He added that he would use his considerable technical # > and personal resources to squash such a concept if it were attempted. # > Given his status as an inventor, coder, and general formative net entity,
# > I decided to let the matter drop. # ># > I think One Root Zone is still a bad idea for all the reasons I brought up
# > in 1994, 2001, and 2003, plus the additional incentive of general# > censorship and net-nannyism at a carrier and national policy level. But # > 'One Root Zone plus N Portal Zones' is even *worse* than One Root Zone,
# > for all these *plus* the fiscal misbehavior incentives. # ># > Paul, time to buckle on your armor, dude. Somebody out there (not me!) # > is pursuing this whole-hog, and has a lotta fiscal incentive, and deep
# > pockets, to push it through. # > # > cheers, # > Stratain 2005 i am just as passionate but not always just as polite about this as i was in prior years. on http://fm.vix.com/ i repeated some of my words from
NANOG last week. to wit:i am not neccesarily an admirer of the US-DoC/ICANN/VeriSign trinity,
but i work to uphold it in spite of its flaws and my misgivings, simply because of the end-game mechanics. if any hair-brainedalternate root scheme ever gets traction and starts to be a force to be reckoned with, then THAT is when the gold rush will begin. instead
of a few whacko pirates like new.net and unidt, we'll be buried inVC-funded "namespace plays". every isp will have to decide whether to
start one, join one, or stay with the default. most will decide tooutsource or consort, but the money plays and consortia will come and go and fail and merge just like telco's and isp's do today. the losers will be my children, and everybody else who just wants to type a URL
they saw on a milk carton into their browser and have it work.sadly for me, it doesn't always matter to the world what i think. folks ARE doing "alternate roots", and mostly not for the democracy-related reasons you
gave. a note, though. i had the incredible honour of joining martinvarsavsky, dan gilmor, joi ito, david isenberg, and a dozen or so others in madrid to talk about internet's effect on democracy. from I-P's archives:
http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200503/ msg00113.html
i strongly recommend a reading, even if it's a re-reading, of "theinfrastructure of democracy" as shown on the above page. and do note that
i was in total agreement with that consensus position.however, there's not a lot of overlap between the concept of internet- enabled democracy and the concept of alternate roots. having lots of roots means that speech is not as free, and that your isp or your government can connect you to a namespace that lacks the kind of dissent they don't like, or mis- answer your computer's DNS questions in a way that shows you only what they want you to see. alternate roots is a goalset not only outside the DNS protocol but
incompatible with internet-enabled democracy.that having been said, i'm sometimes a practical man. alternate roots do exist, and more will come. i've pondered the meaning of all of this within the context of the dns protocol and of my company's open source implementation of that protocol, and i think i can see a way to define and support alternate roots in a way that will reduce their chaos -- but not their harm. given that the US-DoC/VeriSign/ICANN trinity pursuing "a policy contrary to their own interests" and that the inevitable result of this will be hundreds if not thousands of chaotically interrelated dns namespaces, i'm ready to consider ways that DNS and BIND might be extended to make that inevitable condition less painful to live in. but if i do it, it will be with rage in my heart against those who could have helped us preserve name universality but who squandered
that opportunity for short term political or financial gain.oh and one more thing. a small technical matter, insignificant next to the democracy-related points you raised. neustar isn't doing anything wrong--
the "root" they'll operate will only be seen by GPRS cell towers, not byend-user handsets. end-user GPRS handsets will mostly see content from .MOBI, and GSMA (the contracting party for neustar in this case) was a very strong
member of the consortium who asked for .MOBI. it's not wrong to make anamespace that's only usable by a closed population-- folks following RFC1918 do it every day. it's not wrong for neustar to do this. silly, yes. wrong, no. it's not necessary and it will cause them more trouble than it saves them and it will be used as a template by people who shouldn't follow it and it's clearly causing a lot of misunderstanding in forums like I-P... but it's not an alternate root in the sense that new.net or unidt are alternate roots,
and it's probably safe to stop talking about it now. ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as lists-ip () insecure org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
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