At 10:21 PM 3/13/01 -0500, you wrote:

but I've been saying ever since this whole topic came up that the worst possible outcome was more than one root. Nothing that has happened in the interim has changed my mind about that.

Yes, but you haven't been part of the solution either. That makes you part of the problem. Shouting "oh my, how terrible" in All Caps doesn't help solve the situation or stop the problem from occurring again. There is no technical need for more than one root. Every alt.root worth talking to will admit that. There are multiple roots because of the **multiple failures** to introduce competition to the NSI registry. Draft Postel was canned in favor of the gTLD-MOU which was canned in favor of the Green/White paper that founded ICANN - who has now disenfranchised almost everybody who was once willing to give it a chance (if not $50,000). With the growth of alt.roots, you are seeing the Internet route around a single point of failure - specifically competition within the US Government root zone. The IAB's fabulously entitled "Unique DNS Root" is seen as major damage to the health of the Internet, and the Internet community is routing around it with alt.roots. Is there a pattern here? Yes. Can it be called a consensus? Yes. The alt.roots are doing DNS coordination on their own without an ICANN expense account or a "big 4" accounting firm. The two roots which are doing the least coordination are the ones that have tried to take ICANN/IANA head-on and lost (PGP Media/Name.Space and .TV/IdeaLab/New.net). Is there a pattern here? Yes. Can it be called a consensus? Yes. What I'm getting at here is that the alt.root community would probably rather go away and become registries under RFC1591 (even Postel admitted to me RFC1591 isn't just for the ccTLDs) than have to endure a minority share of Internet users. Because the access to the US Government root is completely tied up by Verisign and ICANN playing kissy-kissy (I won't go into the current agreement farce), the Internet community is voting away from the US Government root on a daily basis. The longer the ICANN/DoC doors are closed to the "Unique DNS Root", the more alt.roots will spring up. And the more that spring up, the more of the Internet will support them. Is there a pattern here? Yes. Can it be called a consensus? Yes. The solution is simple. Open up the US Government root to all parties on an equitable basis (RFC1591). Or accept the consequences of a fractured root. All I'm trying to do is some damage control until either one happens. I told the IAHC back in 1996 this would happen and it's happened. Could multiple roots have been avoided? Damn right they could have. Crying over it now doesn't solve the problem or make them "magically" go away. Are you going to stick your head back in the sand and say "oh, how terrible" over and over, or are you going to help the alt.root community come to a unified single-root consensus? Best Regards, Simon -- "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, and then you win. And once you have won, they join you." - Mahatma Gandhi