[discuss] Root servers yet again (Re: Roadmap for globalizing IANA)

Wed Mar 5 05:44:16 UTC 2014

On March 4, 2014 at 13:03 drc at virtualized.org (David Conrad) wrote:
 > ...It also would not address the
 > more fundamental problem of how users of applications such as web
 > browsers, mail clients, etc., would be able to specify _which_
 > class a particular domain name should be looked up in.  That is,
 > since there is no way in _all_ current applications to specify a
 > class, how is a user going to say "look up www.example.com in class
 > "EB" instead of class "IN"?

It's rarely useful to consider problems like this in a forum such as
this: Software marches on (given some motivation.)

There are other discussions elsewhere about how many programs are
rejecting the new TLDs because they do some sort of sanity check
(perhaps) and just don't consider .REALLYCOOLDOMAIN "sane".

But reports are that even as this is being discussed the problems are
being fixed. I believe such a problem with the Firefox browser was
just fixed. Probably a matter of removing some code -- and finding
someone whose job description includes "removes code", not easy!

It's a problem for someone, no argument, but not for policy makers
unless the feedback is that something would create a real
impossibility or nearly so. That's possible of course.

It's good to bring this up, just not as a dealbreaker, but it is a
cost factor.

There are problems vis a vis CNAMES already mentioned in this
discussion which are deeper in the DNS server design but they too
could be fixed. SMOP*. Well, SMOP and an RFC would probably be needed
since the problem was improperly anticipated.

This is not to say multiple roots via multiple classes is a good idea.
Only that relatively minor implementation problems aren't very useful
as wedge issues.

* Simple Matter of Programming.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

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