Re: Mostly operational content (was Re: piracy on parade)

["Steven M. Bellovin" <smb () research att com>]

In message <000801bfede1$db5ca690$aba4b9d0@PEREGRIN>, "Roeland M.J. Meyer" writ
es:
> > Right.  Have a look at the IAB statement on the subject of DNS
> roots:
> > http://www.iab.org/iab/IAB-Technical-Comment.txt
>
> Yes, pure politics, zero operational content. When was the last
> time the IAB released a technical, politically neutral paper?
> Ans: a ver long time ago (years). That paper caused me to cast a
> negative vote for Brian Carpenter, in the last ISOC elections.
> They presented zero technical support for their position. It was
> all anecdotal, pure opinion, no substance.

I suspect I'm going to regret even responding to this, but...  Did you 
even read that document before posting?  It's purely technical -- it 
outlines the purely-technical reasons why the DNS has to have one root 
if we're to have effective communication on the net.

As for technical papers -- if nothing else, there are the workshops the 
IAB sponsors; the reports of those workshops are also on the IAB Web 
page.  The report on the Network Layer workshop is about to be 
released; there are also forthcoming RFCs on QoS and security.
> I submit that the IAB isn't doing its job and until they do, they
> should refrain from wasting their resources in the policy arena.
I suspect that the entire IAB wants to spend less time on politics -- I 
know I'd rather stick to the technical stuff.  But external affairs are 
explicitly our responsibility, per RFC 2580 and its predecessort, RFC 
1601.

                --Steve Bellovin