The whole alternate-root ${STATE}horse (was Re: Enable BIND cache server to resolve chinese domain name?)

["Jay R. Ashworth" <jra () baylink com>]

On Sun, Jul 03, 2005 at 10:20:13PM -0700, Steve Gibbard wrote:
> On Mon, 4 Jul 2005, Mark Andrews wrote:
> > > Do I need to modify our cache server configuration to
> > > enable it?
> >
> >     Only if you wish to do all your other customers a disfavour
> >     by configuring your caching servers to support a private
> >     namespace then yes.
>
> There's no particular technical magic to the ICANN-run roots, except that 
> it's what just about everybody else is using.  This means that if you 
> enter the same hostname on two computers far away from each other, you're 
> probably going to end up at the same place, or at least at places run by 
> the same organization.  This standardization is valuable, so anybody 
> trying to make a different standard that isn't widely used compete with it 
> is going to have a hard time convincing people to switch.
>
> That doesn't mean a competing system wouldn't work, for those who are 
> using it.  They'd just be limited in who they could talk to, and that 
> generally wouldn't be very appealing.

Well, Steve; that reply is a *little* disingenuous: all of the
alternative root zones and root server clusters that *I'm* aware of
track the ICANN root, except in the rare instances where there are TLD
collisions.

I'm not aware of any such specific collisions; I stopped tracking that area
when NetSol shutdown that mailing list without warning several years
ago.  I merely observe that they're possible.

> A system that would limit my ability to talk to people in other countries 
> doesn't sound very appealing to me.  On the other hand, the Chinese 
> government has been trying hard to limit or control communications between 
> people in China and the rest of the world for years.  In that sense, 
> maintaining their own DNS root, incompatible with the rest of the world, 
> might be seen as a considerable advantage.  If they don't care about 
> breaking compatibility with the DNS root the rest of the world uses, the 
> disadvantages of such a scheme become fairly moot.

Eric Raymond, that polarizing ambassador for open source, likes to
disseminate the word (and concept) "conflating" -- that being the
habit, or attempt, by an arguer of a point to hook together two related
but distinct concepts that may both be involved in a topic, but may not
have the cause and effect relationship being implied by said arguer.

This is a good example, IMHO: Even if China *did* maintain their own
root, unless they also maintained their own copies of the 2LD's, like
.com, they couldn't snip out *specific* sites they didn't want people
to see.

But the whole "there's a non-ICANN root: the sky is falling" thing is
an argument cooked up to scare the unwashed; us old wallas don't buy
it.  I just hope none of the unwashed *press* decide to blow the lid
off of it; the public's lack of understanding of the underpinnings of
the net is painful enough now...

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra () baylink com
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