Ad Hoc, eDNS, AlterNIC and the bunch

Thu Apr 10 16:40:53 UTC 1997

On Thu, 10 Apr 1997, Jordan Mendelson wrote:

> 
> Sorry to bring this up, it may be out of the confines of the NANOG realm,
> but since the bulk of name lookups come from major network providers such
> as Sprint, MCI, UUnet and the rest, this seems like the logical place to
> post this.
> 
> Over the past 10 months, there has been escalating talk about the new self
> appointed registries out there. Major news papers, magazines and other
> periodicals have been publishing that "the change is coming". Ultimately,
> the actual change rests at the hands of every user who runs a nameserver,
> for they are the ones who actually have the root server cache. A recent
> article in the Star Tribune, I believe stated that MCI is siding with the
> Internet Ad Hoc society and is going to support these new registries. Now,
> MCIis a major player in the US and if they actually DO start adding new
> root servers to their cache, there might be a major change in the
> Internet.
> 
> I'm curious as to how many other network providers are even thinking about
> changing their root server caches just because some self appointed society
> tells them to. I'm confused as to how this sort of thing got SO out of
> control. I have yet to see an article anywhere countering these people.
> 
> As a lot of you know, the Internet is all politics. What people see in
> real life really effects them when they go online. I have talked to a
> large number of people and they all believe that these new TLDs and
> registries will be appearing in the next 3 to 4 months.
> 
> The people on this list have a tremendous amount of power to change the
> Internet, but unless you use this force in real life to educate the
> public, well... things like this will continue to happen.
> 
> If the Internet Ad Hoc society actually does convince everyone to switch
> over, then there is a major problem. Does this mean any group of people
> who wants to make rules and can get enough publicity can make it happen
> without any sort of actual reasoning behind it? Can I declare an Internet
> tax and if I get enough magazines to print it, actually do it?

No one has mentioned anything about adding new root nameservers.  Of the
over 25 signatories (so far), MCI is just one.  UUnet, Digital, France
Telecom, EFF, are others that come to mind.  The IAHC was selected by IAB,
IANA, ISOC, INTA, WIPO, ITU and NSF.  The entire discussion was held in
public covering 8000 emails over a period of 3 months.  You can see all
details at www.iahc.org including the MoU that will be signed at the end
of April in Geneva at the ITU.  No one is adding root servers and gTLDs as
they wish.  Please do not go by what you read in 3 paragraph newspaper
articles since much of what is stated is inaccurate.  Go to the site and
go thru all the materials.

> 
> This is a scary thought.

Please read all background material.

> 
> 
> Jordan
> 
> --
> Jordan Mendelson     : www.wserv.com/~jordy
> Web Services, Inc.   : www.wserv.com
> 
> 

Hank Nussbacher
IAHC member
[the views expressed above belong to the author and do not
necessarily reflect the views of the other IAHC members]