Multiple Roots are "a good thing" - Karl Auerbach

Greg A. Woods woods at weird.com
Sun Mar 18 20:00:53 UTC 2001


First off let me now blast you into oblivion for posting your response
to my *PRIVATE* message!!!!!  That was a *REALLY* stupid thing to do.
You've now lost all the points you might have had in this game and gone
negative....

[ On Monday, March 19, 2001 at 05:36:57 (+1100), Patrick Corliss wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: Multiple Roots are "a good thing" - Karl Auerbach
>
> Interesting you should say that based on what I think is my second posting to
> this list.  And that posting quite fairly quoted both points of view.  The
> argument I'm favouring is that put by Karl Auerbach who is considered by many to
> be a leading expert on the internet.

Well anyone justifying their claims by quoting Auerbach is obviously not
doing either the politically or technically astute thing.....  :-)

(quoting his entire proposal was also bad etiquette)

> I see that your partnership specializes in networking and Unix system
> administration.  As you seem to be rather competent, perhaps you could tell me
> more clearly why you think Karl Auerbach is mistaken in his arguments.  They
> seem rather well thought out to me.

Auerbach proposes a system of guaranteed political chaos.  Perhaps in
the long run this would cause a real directory service to appear -- one
which could span the resulting DNS discontinuity -- but in the mean time
it will only cause more and more Internet-based ventures to fail as it
drives a wedge of complete confusion into every user's mind.

Furthermore since Auerbach's proposal breaks the design of the DNS
without proposing a replacement for the reliability mechanisms, it's
bound to fail technically too.  (Though of course a vast number of
domains now operating on the internet fail to take into account the
design constraints of the DNS too, and though many of them really do
fail spectacularly sometimes they're still not properly fixed.)

> Much of Karl's expertise seems rather similar to your own.  It includes secure
> operating systems and secure networks as well as Advanced Internet Architectures
> with Cisco Systems.

I'm very well aware of his past.  You should try reading a few threads
he participated in from ancient Usenet history (1980-1995) once Google
get it back online.  You're welcome to read threads I participated in
too and make up your own mind, of course.

> They might.  Then again they might not.  Depends who's in charge.

"Depends on who's in charge."   Hmmm....   so what exactly then is the
difference between Auerbach's scheme and one where there's one root just
as the design calls for?  At least if you adhere to the technical design
you won't run into technical problems as Auerbach's proposal is bound to
do.

> Andrew McLaughlin said a "unique root".  Karl Auerbach said "multiple roots".
> 
> It is clear to me at least that they are inherently different architectures.

Well of course.  But "a unique root" need not be controlled by someone
or some group that you happen to disagree with.

The correct way to fight against a DNS root controlled by someone you
don't like is not to propose multiple DNS roots, but rather to campaign
for a democratic root.  Auerbach's proposal is not technically sound and
is political suicide.

You really really really need to read (and understand) Paul Vixie's
Nov. 1995 paper "External Issues in DNS Scalability" proposing a
technically workable fix to the DNS politics (i.e. the one he sent a
link for to the NANOG list a wee while back).

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098      VE3TCP      <gwoods at acm.org>      <robohack!woods>
Planix, Inc. <woods at planix.com>; Secrets of the Weird <woods at weird.com>




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