[discuss] VGNIC-speak (was: rootservers)

Mon Feb 24 19:36:25 UTC 2014

For someone who is not interested in the "way servers [etc.] call themselves," you are throwing around a lot of terms and acronyms most (if not all) of which seem to be used only within a narrow group and are not used (or no longer used) or understood by many (and in some cases most) on this list, such as (but not limited to):

Top zone
Top zone name server
VGN
VGNIC
EZOP
Catenet
IUsers
HomeRoot
ORSN
TNC, TTL, TTR

And that is just in one email (there other terms that are either archaic, arcane or coined elsewhere in your emails).  The root (so to speak) of these terms and the viewpoint they appear to represent seem to trace back through VGNIC to something called the IUCG and ultimately to JFC Morfin and (at least as inspiration) Louis Pouzin.  I'm sure there is a lot of history behind this grouping and the development of an alternative vocabulary you use so fluently.

Like Marilyn Cade and David Conrad (and perhaps others), I find that this often hinders the discussion among people of varying backgrounds.  I gather that some who participate regularly in the IETF may be more familiar with this vocabulary and the subgroup that advances it.  For me (and perhaps others) it tends to be more or less baffling.

While the number of people who believe in a particular thing is not the only measure of credibility, it is hard for me to tell if this is the work of a very small, very committed and extremely prolific (especially here in "[discuss]") group, or something more widespread.  Either way, it tends to pull (and perhaps deter and distort) the conversation here fairly significantly, and it is hard for me to tell if that takes the larger group of [discuss]-ants here (from varying backgrounds and viewpoints themselves) in a good direction, or just straight down a well (so to speak).

Greg Shatan

-----Original Message-----
From: discuss-bounces at 1net.org [mailto:discuss-bounces at 1net.org] On Behalf Of Elisabeth Blanconil
Sent: Monday, February 24, 2014 11:20 AM
To: David Conrad
Cc: discuss at 1net.org
Subject: Re: [discuss] rootservers

At 11:42 24/02/2014, David Conrad wrote:
>Elisabeth,
>
>On Feb 24, 2014, at 12:10 PM, Elisabeth Blanconil <info at vgnic.org> wrote:
> > Here is the distribution of the 365 top zone name servers (root
> > servers)
>I suspect creating a new term for the root name servers is unlikely to
>be helpful to anyone.

David,
We are not specifically interested in the way servers call themselves. We are interested in servers where IUsers can find identified information on the top zone. Identified information means that the information collection and dissemination policy are reasonably documented, consistent and stable. And made plainly available to the IUsers.

> > made available by the two VGNICs I know of (ICANN/IANA and ORSN).
>What's a "VGNIC"?  I presume it is not the Network Information Center
>for the British Virgin Island (a la JPNIC, CNNIC, KRNIC, TWNIC, etc).

You may have noted that this is my organisation.You are free t to access our under development site: http://vgnics.net. I accept that the VGNIC concept fosters competition (cf. ICANN by-laws) in the name space and that you may wish to comment it. Your experience as a the largest so far VGNIC manager could be precious to the community.

However, I must say that due to our limited resources we focus on the EZOP (exploration of the primary zone map) and the subsequent HomeRoot experimentation project. My "rootservers" list isthe preparation of an input to EZOP. ORSN documents the IPs of all its machines, not the RSSAC. This might be embarrassing in case of necessity and/or local limited access (islands, earth breaks, wars, social events, power shortages, tsunamis, etc.) or update/political discrepancies.

Steve Crocker's remark about access surety and delays to TLD's name server is of the essence. However, rather than being business oriented like ICANNers advocating .com TNCs registry duplication (they might afford the cost) we are interested in supporting free registration for local emergency services. Local replication of the national TLD name servers, as well.  We documented that we will want to support HomeRoot TTLs as TTRs, i.e. "time to resurect" if access to the TLD nameserver was not possible.

> > They are broken down per countries as follows:
>A graphical representation of root name server instance distribution
>can be found at: http://www.root-servers.org (Note that the location of
>the "B" root name server instance is not in the South Atlantic just off
>the coast of western Africa (Lat: 0,
>Lon: 0), but in Los Angeles, US).

Thank you for this information. That is far more precise than the "earth" entry by the ROOT-B manager. This increase the number of US located top zone name servers to 70.

>It might also be useful to observe that a common technique at larger
>ISPs and other resolver operators is to mirror the root zone into their
>resolvers, thereby removing the need of those resolvers to actually
>query the root servers.  As such, those resolvers could be considered
>to be a form of root name servers as well. Of course, it is a bit
>challenging to identify which resolvers actually do this mirroring...

Correct. Hence the VGNICS criteria about information collection and dissemination policy being reasonably documented, consistent and stable, and made plainly available to IUsers.
Best
Hebe

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