Re: [wg-c] bounced, reposted for Paul Garrin

[Dave Crocker <dcrocker@brandenburg.com>]

At 06:33 PM 12/19/1999 ,  Paul Garrin <pg@lokmail.net> wrote:
> >> If they are coordinated, they are not "roots" in the real sense.
> >
> >I would say in the "legacy" sense, not the "real" sense.

The term legacy is political, not technical.  It is relevant from an 
operations standpoint only in the presence of a plan to replace the 
existing root service.  Notably absent from the discussion of multiple 
roots is a detailed proposal for administration and operation.

Unless and until there is a detailed proposal for this fundamental change 
to the IANA/ICANN DNS root, discussion of it is just as wasteful as it has 
been for several years.  Useful for distraction, but nothing productive.

> >A coordination authority would be applicable in the administrative
> >sense, but not necessarily in the technical sense.  Administrative

A nicely , meaningless utterance, absent any detail attempting to 
distinguish the two.

> >coordination is important for quality control and accreditation of
> >operators and in the setting of and enforcement of standards.  This

For someone running a service, such platitudes that ignore the relevance of 
coordination for technical operations is downright facinating.  Mayhaps 
your company is operated in such a collaborative fashion, with no authority 
hierarchy?

> >The technical coordination is the duty of the peering networks
> >that operate the decentralized and coordinated root systems in

Please review a basic computer science text about tree-based data 
structures and explain how to achieve decentralization within a node rather 
than between nodes.

> >accordance with the standards set through engineering and development
> >of the shared root system.  Decentralizing the root (or better,
> >the decentralized control of the root.zone) is easier than the
> >decentralized sharing of TLD operations, assuming that updates
> >to the root.zone (adding TLDs) happen at a low frequency and

Fine. It's easy.  That means it won't be difficult for you to prepare and 
present a coherent and detailed proposal to achieve it, right?

> >I don't make such grand claims as to have more experience than the IAB.
> >I did however discuss the issues with Paul Mockapetris at length some
> >time ago and his response was that competent computer scientists could
> >build it.  I have such talent on my team and we are doing it.

You nicely fail to define the "it", thereby making any followup impossible.

> >Again, I don't make such grand assertions.  However, my engineers,
> >one of whom is a PhD candidate at Columbia U. and has worked for
> >NASA and DARPA and who holds several patents, and another who has worked 
> for
> >Lucent, are competent in these areas and are working on just such a system
> >which we will open up to a testbed in the coming months.  If you are
> >interested in participating please keep in touch with us and we will
> >keep you up to date on our progress.

Always glad to see corporate plugs in these discussion lists...

d/

=-=-=-=-=
Dave Crocker  <dcrocker@brandenburg.com>
Brandenburg Consulting  <www.brandenburg.com>
Tel: +1.408.246.8253,  Fax: +1.408.273.6464
675 Spruce Drive,  Sunnyvale, CA 94086 USA