[discuss] Real world Impact of multiple roots

Wed Jan 29 15:47:54 UTC 2014

On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 09:10:01AM -0500, Avri Doria wrote:

> I think the problem is that there are those who want to be able to
> innovate by creating new names, name authorities and perhaps even
> schema without being subject to a single point of control, ICANN,
> with its outrageous prices and at times absurd processes.

For very close to all of the above, there is little reason to have
anything but the most casual link to ICANN.  Register a name in any of
the gTLDs and you're done.  You can do this for well under $20/year,
which hardly seems like an "outrageous price", and one's interaction
with ICANN boils down to the consensus policies around WHOIS data.  If
you don't like that, you can register through some anonymizing
service; it's still not costly.

So if it were only the above, it's not a serious objection.

> the "there can be only one" notion runs counter to the Internet
> Architecture as I understand it

There also can be only one root of the number space.  It doesn't run
counter to the Internet architecture at all.  Directed-graph
hierarchies are all over the place on the Internet, and they all have
this property.

> My long term techno-policy view is that anything that
> does not provide an evolutionary path is a fault point where
> disruptions will eventually occur.

You might want to follow the development of the IAB's workshop report
on the ITAT workshop last December.  This issue is one of the things
it was concerned about.

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
ajs at anvilwalrusden.com