Statements against new.net?

Tue Mar 13 21:14:06 UTC 2001

On Tue, 13 Mar 2001 12:54:42 PST, Roeland Meyer said:
> By the sheer fact that they included a non-technical value-judgment.

OK.. I'm going to cite chapter and verse:

Summary

   To remain a global network, the Internet requires the existence of a
   globally unique public name space.  The DNS name space is a
   hierarchical name space derived from a single, globally unique root.
   This is a technical constraint inherent in the design of the DNS.
   Therefore it is not technically feasible for there to be more than
   one root in the public DNS.  That one root must be supported by a set
   of coordinated root servers administered by a unique naming
   authority.

   Put simply, deploying multiple public DNS roots would raise a very
   strong possibility that users of different ISPs who click on the same
   link on a web page could end up at different destinations, against
   the will of the web page designers.

   This does not preclude private networks from operating their own
   private name spaces, but if they wish to make use of names uniquely
   defined for the global Internet, they have to fetch that information
   from the global DNS naming hierarchy, and in particular from the
   coordinated root servers of the global DNS naming hierarchy.

OK?  Read that.  Read it again.  Read it a third time.  *ALL* that
says is "If you want to agree what the DNS tree looks like, you have
to share a root.  If you want your own view, use your own root.
That's the way DNS is.  You're stuck with the fact that DNS works
that way. You have to make your own choice which root to use".

This is *NOT* rocket science.  Geez.  Now, given that they *SAY* right there
in that third paragraph that you're *TOTALLY* free to use your own root,
but if you want to agree with the rest of the world you have to share
a root, what value judgment are THEY making?

OK?  Let me repeat that *AGAIN* for the clue-challenged:

RFC2826 SAYS YOU HAVE TO CHOOSE FOR YOURSELF.  Which is more important
to *YOU*?  100% consistency with the rest of the world, or access to
your private name space?  *YOU* evaluate, *YOU* choose, and RFC2826 is
nice enough to point out the problems you'll encounter.

Let me repeat that *ONE MORE* time.

RFC2826 SAYS YOU HAVE TO CHOOSE FOR YOURSELF.

Now, what non-technical value judgment did you say that RFC2826 was
making for you?  It's not a "value judgment" that using multiple roots
with DNS results in inconsistencies, it's *the way DNS works*.

I suppose the *next* thing we'll see is people complaining that the
concept of CIDR is an evil value judgement, because you need to decide what
aggregation to do in order to keep the routing table a manageable size.

And sometime in May, we'll have the complaints that IP addresses are
political because they only allow 256 values per octet, and a
class-action lawsuit is planned for the number 257, 258, -3, and all
the fractions.

Now - I'll *readily* agree that "ICANN versus new.net" is political,
and probably worth discussing.  However, I'm going to have to start
putting Bozo Flags on people who *still* claim that RFC2826 is political
just because it points out that Things Will Provably Break if you have
conflicting roots.

-- 
				Valdis Kletnieks
				Operating Systems Analyst
				Virginia Tech