Ad Hoc, eDNS, AlterNIC and the bunch

Thu Apr 10 18:48:01 UTC 1997

I believe you have your facts incorrect here....

Jordan Mendelson writes:
> 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

You are referring to the IAHC, not the "Internet Ad Hoc Society",
which doesn't exist.

The IAHC was a committee composed of representatives from the
International Telecommunication Union, WIPO, the Internet Society, the
IAB, the IANA, INTA and the Federal Networking Council. We were
chartered to advise the IANA on an update to the mechanisms for
management and operations of the generic TLD space.

> and is going to support these new registries. Now,
> MCI is 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.

MCI's support for the IAHC proposal implies just the opposite -- that
they are supporting pointing at the current IANA authority based root
name servers.

> 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.

As I've noted, you have the situation reversed -- MCI, UUNet and the
rest are supporting pointing at the current name servers. The IAHC was
also not self appointed -- we were appointed by the major internet
governance organizations and several interested international bodies.

You seem to have the IAHC confused with the "eDNS", which is indeed a
self appointed group. So far as I know, however, they have virtually
no real support.

Perry
Speaking purely for myself and not in an official capacity