[discuss] Real world Impact of multiple roots

Tue Jan 28 21:35:50 UTC 2014

Roland,

On 29/01/2014 05:55, Roland Perry wrote:
> In message <52E6D9FB.4010405 at gmail.com>, at 11:13:15 on Tue, 28 Jan
> 2014, Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com> writes
>> 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.
> 
> I'd like to know if you think that Facebook (etc) have Balkanised the
> email addressing space by allocating me [or did I claim it, not sure
> about that...] an email identity within their social networking site
> that differs from any in the ICANN global DNS space.

Facebook (etc.) are voluntary. If you choose to use a non-global service,
a.k.a. a walled garden, that's your choice and I respect it. That is quite
different from splitting the global namespace - I imagine that FB users
would be quite annoyed if connecting to facebook.com took them to
different services on different occasions. But of course somebody would
soon implement a fix, so that users could choose between (I am making
this up) facebook.com.oldroot and facebook.com.newroot. That's why
computer scientists are so fond of recursion.

     Brian