[discuss] Real world Impact of multiple roots

Mon Jan 27 22:13:15 UTC 2014

On 28/01/2014 05:38, Dr. Ben Fuller wrote:
> All,
> 
> Thanks for the replies. The answers seem to confirm my suspicion that an Internet with two or more roots will have major impacts to business and society. 

Way back in history, there was a time when many different email systems
were in use, and there was no global DNS. At that time, some of us had
to deal with the situation, since a balkanized email world was no use
to us. The consequences were multiple, including at least

1. The need to pay for highly skilled staff and additional equipment
to implement and operate multi-protocol mail gateways.

2. The need for end users to understand details of various email
addressing schemes, and in some cases to compose ad hoc addresses
(which in my case usually included !mcvax, !unido or !seismo
as well as !cernvax, not to mention things like %bitnet). In this case
it was the lack of a single root for a single namespace that actually
forced the end user to understand routes. No pun intended.

3. Frequent long delays and delivery failures.

So, if we had a balkanized DNS namespace, I'm sure we'd figure
out ways round it, but I'd expect issues like the above to return,
for all services, and enormous costs and lost business as a result.

    Brian