On Wed, 14 Nov 2001, Daniel Golding wrote:
Interestingly, this revolving photo op with the A root name server has been going on for several years. To those who are not very technical, there is something uniquely reassuring about the idea that the internet has a "center" or a "brain". It is difficult to say why, but I speculate that the idea that the internet is easier to cripple or destroy helps government officials sleep at night, because it maintains the illusion of control. Distributed systems are much harder to control, and are disconcerting to those who's task is control of systems rather than their perpetuation.
I'm more annoyed at the politico's than verisign. The Department of Commerce issued a press release announcing their trip. There are more root name servers around washington dc than any where else in the world. With all the choices, if they are concerned about security why do they always go to the same place? Touring Verisign to learn about the security of the Internet is about as useful as visiting the NASDAQ marketsite near Times Square in New York City to examine the stability of the US market system. It has pretty visuals, flashing screens, and a fake button. If the politico's wanted to see how well the Internet is really protected, they would visit the non-show places. Security usually depends on your weakest link, not your fanciest show place. The "roots" are a huge distraction. Most of the problems with DNS are outside the root name servers. I have to admit ICANN was an eye-opening experience for me. The parts of DNS I care about are in relatively good shape (compared to other utilities). But there are other parts which are scary. I don't know if Darwin will prune that part of the tree in time.