[discuss] Real world Impact of multiple roots

Wed Jan 29 14:10:01 UTC 2014

On 29-Jan-14 03:19, Steve Crocker wrote:
> The larger question is what is the problem that is driving this discussion?  What isn't working?  Many of us on this are having trouble understanding why it's useful to discuss "multiple roots", which I put in quotes because I think the term means different things to different people.

My perspective for my interest in the issue:

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.  While not a personal 
goal as I am currently comfortable volunteering and fighting within the 
ICANN multistakeholder processes, it seems a reasonable goal that should 
be accommodated if at all possible.

And I believe the technology should be able to offer that and that the 
"there can be only one" notion runs counter to the Internet Architecture 
as I understand it, and therefore remains a problem to be solved.  I 
believe that the root is already split and will get more so over time. 
Though none are yet significant and none will probably grow as big as 
the gorilla in the room, we need to move further in  technological 
solutions to insure that multiple roots, however we define it, do not 
interfere with the single Internet of all internets. Preserving that is 
my primary concern.  And since the split can't be stopped the Internet 
needs to adapt and absorb the change.

This is a policy issue we have been expending an amazing amount of time 
on in the last decades.  And it is an issue that even when it is not the 
issue on the table it is an issue the motivates many of the other 
issues.  It won't do for those of us who are happy with the current 
solution to block other possibilities. Or to call them impossible when 
they are clearly not impossible, just really hard.

Given that there is a policy drive to do this, and that it is 
essentially a mis-feature of the Internet Architecture to have a single 
authority that prevents innovation, I find it a worthy issue for 
discussion and study.

Finally, I just do not see people using DNS in 2063, let alone 2113, but 
unfortunately I also do not see us creating a path for evolving this 
particular part of the internet.  At the the web and other application 
level there is great opportunity for innovation,  In the guts of the 
system, e.g. the DNS, innovation gets more difficult all the time.  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.

And thus I see it as a problem to be discussed and resolved.

avri