[discuss] So-called alternate roots

Sat Jan 4 21:28:22 UTC 2014

On 04/01/2014 19:44, Seun Ojedeji wrote:
> I am quite a newbie in DNS. In summary, I had understood the alternate root
> to be a copy of the main root and there is a master root which has the
> capability to update all the other 8 main roots, while individual roots
> provide copies to their several alternates (since there was v4 limitation
> that then created the anycast option that enabled user to be able to
> communicate as if it was a single root). Are we then saying those
> alternates are indeed also authoritative roots i.e they send updates to the
> root servers?

I was talking about the abstract idea of the namespace, not about
they way the actual root servers have evolved.

    Brian (2/4 for today)

> 
> Cheers!
> 
> sent from Google nexus 4
> On 4 Jan 2014 02:00, "Brian E Carpenter" <brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
>> Michel,
>>
>> On 04/01/2014 11:45, Michel Gauthier wrote:
>>> At 00:01 03/01/2014, Andrew Sullivan wrote:
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Jan 02, 2014 at 11:19:30PM +0100, Michel Gauthier wrote:
>>>>> ICANN ICP-3 multi-root competition?
>>>> If I may ask, what does it even possibly mean to talk of "multi-root"?
>>> I am not a specialist Iike you. I just trust the people in charge and
>>> use their words and expertise.
>>>
>>> The people in charge (ICANN) state the "policy currently followed in
>>> administering the authoritative root of the Domain Name System"
>>> "provides a facility for future extensions that accommodates the
>>> possibility of safely deploying multiple roots on the public Internet"
>>> as "ultimately there may be better architectures for getting the job
>>> done where the need for a single, authoritative root will not be an
>> issue".
>>> http://www.icann.org/en/about/unique-authoritative-root
>> This isn't the first time people have wished to rescind the laws
>> of mathematics. If a name space is to be unambiguous it must
>> have a single logical root and that is not going to change, even
>> ultimately. There could be other implementation techniques that
>> would hide the single root from view, although I can't see why
>> that would be an advantage.
>>
>> (That kind of solution, which I investigated at a very abstract
>> level a few years ago, requires independent allocation engines
>> to communicate with each other to either deny an allocation
>> request or to guarantee that it's unique. Although that doesn't
>> require a single engine to act as the root, it does require the
>> entire set of allocators to communicate with each other. That's
>> a lot of complexity for no obvious advantage.)
>>
>> Regards
>>      Brian (2/4 for 2014-01-04 NZDST)
>>
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> 