Re: Multiple Roots are "a good thing" - Karl Auerbach

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

In message <20010318204704.40B8D8C () proven weird com>, Greg A. Woods writes:
> [ On Sunday, March 18, 2001 at 14:23:26 (-0500), Miles Fidelman wrote: ]
> > Subject: Re: Multiple Roots are "a good thing" - Karl Auerbach
> >
> > I would suggest that telephone books/directories are not an appropriate
> > analogy. Rather, DNS is a lot closer to the internal plumbing of the net -
> > more akin to Signalling System #7. I'd guess that for 95% or more of phone
> > calls, the caller already knows the numeric phone number in question -
> > while for the Internet, very few people give their email addresses as
> > mfidelman@207.226.172.79 or http://207.226.172.79. Telephone directories
> > are optional in most cases, DNS is not.
>
> You are absolutely correct.  :-)
>
> Telephone directories are most definitely *not* like the DNS.  A domain
> name is more like a telephone number itself, and as you say the IP
> numbers are more like the underlying circuit routing glue in something
> like SS#7.  We really do not have a "telephone directory" for the
> Internet (unless you count WHOIS/RWHOIS). 

Right.  And even for phone numbers, there's a single authority 
controlling the space.  Internationally, it's the ITU; within the U.S./
Candadian zone, it's the North American Number Plan Administrator.
And its problem has been too little supervision -- see
http://www.bergen.com/biz/codes18200103181.htm


                --Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb