On Tue, Jul 05, 2005 at 08:38:41PM +0200, Brad Knowles wrote:
At 9:43 AM -0400 2005-07-05, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
Moreover, most of them are unlikely to be willing to just live with the problem, if no other suitable technical solution can be found. Instead, they'll believe the sales pitch of someone else who says that they can fix the problem, even if that's not technically possible.
Well they might. Well, actually, poorly they might.
But that argument seems to play right *to* the alt-root operators, since the "fix" is to switch your customer resolvers to point to one of them.
I disagree. The problem is that there are too many alternatives.
To many alt-roots? Or too many alt-TLD's?
(Assuming, of course, they stay supersets of ICANN, and don't get at cross-purposes with one another.)
The problem is that they are pretty much guaranteed to get at cross-purposes.
Well, there have been alt-root zones available for, what 6 or 7 years now? And how many collisions have there actually been in practice? 2? 3?
In fact, merging them at your resolvers might be the best solution.
I don't think that's really practical. I'm sorry, I just don't trust them to write a resolver that's going to get included in libc (or wherever), and for which the world is going to be dependant.
Well, I meant "at your customer recursive resolver servers", since the topic at hand was "what do IAP's do to support their retail customers", but...
The alternative roots will always be marginal, at best. The problem is that while they are marginal, they can still create serious problems for the rest of us.
In the context which people have been discussing, I don't honestly see how they cause "the rest of us" problems. People with domains *in* those aTLD's, yes. But as I noted somewhere else in this thread, the only people who would have un-mirrored aTLD domains would be precisely those who were evangelising for the concept, and it would be in their best interest to be explaining what was going on...
But Steve's approach doesn't seem to *me* to play in that direction. Am I wrong?
I'm not sure I understand which Steve you're talking about. Do you mean Steve Gibbard, in his post dated Sun, 3 Jul 2005 22:20:13 -0700 (PDT)?
I did mean Mr. Gibbard, yes.
If so, then each country running their own alternative root won't solve the problem of data leaking through the edges.
"Data leaking through the edges"...
People will always be able to access data by pure IP address, or choosing to use the real root servers. Push come to shove, and the real root servers could be proxied through other systems via other methods.
"Real" is *such* a metaphysical term here, isn't it? :-)
The reverse problem is more difficult to deal with -- that of people wanting to access Chinese (or whatever) sites that can only be found in the Chinese-owned alternative root.
Stipulated. But whose problem *is* that? Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com Designer Baylink RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates The Things I Think '87 e24 St Petersburg FL USA http://baylink.pitas.com +1 727 647 1274 If you can read this... thank a system administrator. Or two. --me