[discuss] So-called alternate roots

[Brian E Carpenter]

Michel,

On 04/01/2014 11:45, Michel Gauthier wrote:
> At 00:01 03/01/2014, Andrew Sullivan wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 02, 2014 at 11:19:30PM +0100, Michel Gauthier wrote:
>> > ICANN ICP-3 multi-root competition?
>>
>> If I may ask, what does it even possibly mean to talk of "multi-root"?
> 
> I am not a specialist Iike you. I just trust the people in charge and
> use their words and expertise.
> 
> The people in charge (ICANN) state the "policy currently followed in
> administering the authoritative root of the Domain Name System"
> "provides a facility for future extensions that accommodates the
> possibility of safely deploying multiple roots on the public Internet"
> as "ultimately there may be better architectures for getting the job
> done where the need for a single, authoritative root will not be an issue".
> 
> http://www.icann.org/en/about/unique-authoritative-root

This isn't the first time people have wished to rescind the laws
of mathematics. If a name space is to be unambiguous it must
have a single logical root and that is not going to change, even
ultimately. There could be other implementation techniques that
would hide the single root from view, although I can't see why
that would be an advantage.

(That kind of solution, which I investigated at a very abstract
level a few years ago, requires independent allocation engines
to communicate with each other to either deny an allocation
request or to guarantee that it's unique. Although that doesn't
require a single engine to act as the root, it does require the
entire set of allocators to communicate with each other. That's
a lot of complexity for no obvious advantage.)

Regards
     Brian (2/4 for 2014-01-04 NZDST)