The Root 64 Challenge

Wed May 7 23:39:55 UTC 1997

Some people can continue to play games. Most
peple involved in the Registry Industry have moved
beyond this and are now deploying real servers on
real networks.

In my opinion, there is still a lot of room on the
"Root 64" chessboard. This board is 8 by 8 and
has room for 8 Root Name Server Confederations,
each with 8 Root Name Servers.

At the moment, there are only 5 Root Name
Server Confederations actively in use:

	AlterNIC
	eDNS
	InterNIC (Legacy)
	name.space
	NSI/ISI

Imagine that the board can be arranged so that
the servers that are "nearest" to each other are
near each other on the board. If you pick any
square on the board, it has exactly 8 neighbors
assuming the board wraps at the edges and is
really mapped to a sphere.

Because of technical limits of the current "named"
technology used by many companies, people are
forced to select only one Root Name Server
Confederation. This is like saying that they must
select all of the servers in one row of the Root 64
board. More modern versions of the "named"
software will be able to work around this limit.

In the future, an ISP will be able to pick a
square on the board that represents the best
location for that ISP from a connectivity point
of view. When the ISP does that, the surrounding
collection of Root Name Servers will form that
ISPs confederation.

In order to do this in the future, it is important
to have all of the Root Name Server Confederations
"in synch". To be in synch, the Root Name Servers
should provide referrals for the same collection of
TLDs and provide the same set of referrals to the
TLD Name Servers that support that TLD.

If people are really interested in working together
there are three easy steps to meet the "Root 64
Challenge".

1. Develop a MERGED list of ALL of the Top Level
Domains that are used any where in the world by
any TLD Registry and limit the list to 2,048 names.

2. Locate the TLD Name Servers that service
each Top Level Domain.

3. Make sure that all recognized Root Name
Servers support the top 2,048 TLDs and provide
referrals to the proper TLD Name Servers.

4. Deploy 8 Root Name Server Confederations
of 8 servers each and figure out the optimal
arrangement on an 8 by 8 grid based on network
connections.

5. Convene the various Root Name Server
Confederations to represent the 64 Root Name
Servers on the board. There are 5 now, and room
for 3 more. Encourage this convention to bring
the 64 servers into "synch".

These are real steps that will result in working
systems. If the Root 64 Challenge is met, then
people everywhere will have a coherent Internet
and many choices on Top Level Domain Names
and Root Name Server Confederations to use
for support.

Think global and act local...

--
Jim Fleming
Unir Corporation
http://www.Unir.Corp

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