Although I agree that ALL RNS's shouldn't be run by a single organization, I would not have a problem with the RNS's at the XP's being run by the RADB group.
I would. Elise and her team are experts at what they do, but running a root name server is not quite the same thing.
That is quite true. However, I have set up a couple of "un-official" root name servers for clients of mine who had HEAVY lookup traffic. It has worked quite well, and didn't seem substantially different from running an ISP nameserver that was secondary for a whole bunch of customer domains. I'm pretty sure that Elise and her team have the knowledge to run DNS generally, and could be capable of running a RNS with very little training. Alternatively, I am sure that something could be worked out. The point is that I think there is a lot of merit to placing RNS's at XP's where no provider at the XP has to traverse another provider to do root-level resolutions. Basically, if that works, you have a situation where if you loose nameservice, it's probably the least of your problems. Owen