DNS timeline

Wed Feb 27 07:43:17 UTC 2002

David,

At 06:09 PM 2/26/2002 -0800, David Conrad wrote:
>Is your revisionist history part of a stand-up routine?

Aside from it being factually correct, with verifiable documentation (see 
below) that would stand up to courtroom scrutiny, the answer is that I'd 
never considered it. Tell you what, maybe you could be one of the featured 
characters of the "Buggy BIND" sketch. It will (no doubt), go down well 
with the hacker crowd and, at the same time, scare the bejeepers out of the 
Critical Infrastructure folk. Got any good BIND jokes that you can share 
with us (I already have v8.x and v9.x)?

>The DNS root fragmented in 1996?

The first alt.root that posed any kind of challenge to the IANA root 
existed in 1996. Postel described that as a root fracture to me, to my 
face, and I'm not going to argue with Postel. It didn't do any damage as 
there were no conflicting TLDs (like there are now) and consequently no-one 
noticed. Vixie and Kashperuff had a delightfully jovial banter over it at 
the IETF, where Vixie coined the phrase "DNS pirate".

The reality is that the root permanently fragmented because there was 
nowhere to put the IANA TLD applicants. Should there have been two roots 
back then? No. The IANA TLD applicants should have been allowed into the 
IANA root and then AlterNIC, son of AlterNIC, eDNS, ORSC, Name Space, 
New.net, et al, would not exist. This scenario of an open root and no 
alt.roots is described by the Green/White paper and that is partly due to 
the input provided by ORSC at the time (who unsuccessfully attempted to bid 
for the New Corp role which was sole-sourced to ICANN). Those are called 
facts. You can't vote on them.

If you care to look in the link below you'll find the background 
documentation and, under the paragraph "Why The Concern?" is my dated 
prediction from 1996 that has now, unfortunately, come entirely true with 
Stuart Lynn's recent announcement:

http://www.iahc.org/contrib/draft-iahc-higgs-tld-app-00.txt

Are you getting it yet?

>Bill Manning was an "IANA-rep"?

That's documented. For a while it was even on IANA's web site until IOD 
sued IANA, and then poor Bill got shafted by the consequences and had to 
deny everything (remember I was there, and I don't believe he actually did 
anything wrong). This is exactly what I call a piece of revisionist history.

>Alternic chosen as the test root?

By the registry applicants, not by IANA. Not that it matters, they had to 
go somewhere to meet Bill Manning's criteria for operational readiness. 
When IANA said "do this", and we did, somehow we're now wrong? I don't 
think so:

http://www.iiia.org/lists/newdom/current/2269.html

The fact is, people like Randy Bush are now waking up and calling "BS" to 
what we have been calling "BS" for the last 6 years. You, on the other 
hand, are apparently still in heavy denial while your beloved ICANN is 
smashing itself on the iceberg. So I guess you must have a place on the 
lifeboat:

http://www.superroot.net/titanic.html

>Chuckle.
>
>Thanks for the amusement.

No, thank you.

>Rgds,
>-drc
>
>On 2/25/02 6:38 PM, "Simon Higgs" <simon at higgs.com> wrote:
> > At 01:40 AM 2/25/2002 -0500, Sean Donelan wrote:
> >> Since it appears DNS goofiness is about to return, I put together
> >> a timeline of significant events that affected DNS service technically
> >> over the last 20 years.
> >>
> >> http://www.donelan.com/dnstimeline.html
> >
> > Here's some that you missed:
> >
> > 7/31/1996. DNS root fragments (no-one notices). IANA-rep authorizes Draft
> > Postel TLD applicants to go live with new registr(ies) as proof of concept.
> > AlterNIC chosen as the "test root" until 10/1/1996 when TLDs were due to go
> > live in IANA root. Process hi-jacked by ISOC/ITU/WIPO whereby new TLDs
> > forced to exist outside IANA root.
> >
> > ?/2001. ICANN introduce the first intentionally duplicate TLDs
> > (.BIZ/.INFO), de-stabilizing the DNS and causing cross-root pollution (now
> > everyone notices).
> >
> > ?/2001. .US domain moved to .BIZ name servers creating permanent state of
> > DNS root cross-pollution and creates new .US resolution problems.
> >
> > And the latest major internet outage:
> >
> > 2/2002. Randy Bush starts sounding rational (Go Randy, go!):
> > 
> http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200202/msg00242.
> > html
> >
> >
> >
> > Best Regards,
> >
> > Simon
> >
> > --
> > ###
> >

Best Regards,

Simon Higgs

--
"Never underestimate the power of corruption to rewrite history."
  --Oliver Stone (San Jose Mercury News, July 16, 2000)