Re: NetSol screwing the pooch?

[woods () most weird com (Greg A. Woods)]

[ On Thursday, April 13, 2000 at 23:05:33 (-0400), Alex Pilosov wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: NetSol screwing the pooch?
>
> Problems: 
> 1. You'll have two databases, one maintained by consortium, and one
> maintained by NSI/other registrars. I suppose you can say 'consortium data
> takes priority' on consortium's root servers, however, what will happen
> when data begins to diverge? Example: Domain expires in NSI db, gets
> deleted, someone else takes it in NSI database. You have then to
> mirror NSI changes...Its gets very ugly very fast.

"Divergence"?  "Priority?"  The only people it gets "ugly" for are those
who would try to still follow NSI and NSI's root and tld servers.
Everyone in the consortium, and presumably everyone who points their
nameservers at the new root servers, would be quite happy I think.

This of course assumes that most everyone who provides connectivity of
any kind joins the consortium, and of course that everyone who buys
connectivity turns their DNS over to the consortium.

A large and truly non-profit consortium could work if almost everyone
were to simply turn their backs on NSI (and presumably that part of IANA
which gives NSI and the current root servers their authority).  Whether
this can happen politically or not is highly questionable.  It would
require truly global co-operation of a very large number of commercial
entities.  Of course the process is relatively simple so if the ball got
to rolling there's no telling how far it might go.  If too many profit
and power seekers start staking their ground without there first being
an independent overseer then it'll certainly stop as fast as if it were
a cube and not a ball though.

> 2. Last attempts to do things like these (by edns, alternic) were fraught
> with personality clashes among its founders, and ended badly (servers
> brought down, and ISPs who were persuaded to point their roots at these
> servers had to back out the changes).

Yup, when you pull down from underneath lots of things tend to fall on
you.  However if a large bunch of organised people were to try to pull
up from the top we might just lift ourselves by our bootstraps!  ;-)

> Of course, one can say that they failed because they tried to _extend_ the
> namespace, not just manage it. Who knows...

Well, there's that little issue too....  (hinted to by my comment above
about crazed DNS prospectors)

> 3. The other thing is that anything involving DNS governance is a dirty
> business, and everyone who attempted to get involved in it doesn't want to
> touch it again :)

And that one as well!  ;-)

-- 
                                                        Greg A. Woods

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