[discuss] Real world Impact of multiple roots

Tue Jan 28 17:30:17 UTC 2014

Milton,

On Jan 28, 2014, at 4:51 AM, Milton L Mueller <mueller at syr.edu> wrote:
> On Jan 26, 2014, at 10:55 PM, Ben fuller <ben at fuller.na> wrote:
>>> Does anyone out there know of studies on the economic impact that having two or more root zones.
>> 
>> As far as I am aware, current technology does not support more 
>> than one root zone, so I'm not sure how such studies could have been done.
> Interesting pre-emptive move for David to suggest that something he doesn't want cannot and should not even be studied. 

Fascinating assumptions about what I want and believe can or cannot and should or should not be studied.  Wrong, but fascinating.

> It is not inconceivable to coordinate separately administered root zones, depending on the rate of change in either one. I've modeled the problem in an academic paper published more than 10 years ago.

Well, since you have written an academic paper and are clearly the expert: please point me to the _current technology_ that supports "two or more root zones".  Not the coordinated _single root zone_ you posit below (which is blatantly obvious but _not_ what Ben asked). Specifically, what name server software, what resolvers, and what applications exist that can deal with "two or more" instantiations of the DNS namespace as represented by different root zones (presumably simultaneously)?

> And the techies on this list will insist that that layer of coordination is just the new root,

Well, yes. I know it can sometimes be frustrating to be repeatedly told that 1+1=2, but I'm sure you'll adjust eventually.

> thus "solving" the problem tautologically but overlooking the real institutional, economic and operational differences between coordination that is hierarchical and coordination that comes from bargains among autonomous actors.  

The point you appear to be missing is that regardless of whether coordination is hierarchical or non-hierarchical, the end result is a _single namespace_. Most of the folks who get excited about multiple roots want their own namespace and want to impose that namespace on others. You are in essence saying "let's coordinate the multiple namespaces" but that simply results in a coordinated single namespace. There are a myriad ways in which to solve the coordinated single namespace problem (hint: ICANN is one of them). That isn't (as far as I can tell) what Ben was asking about.

Regards,
-drc

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