create a separate NS hierarchy which has only numeric "names"; and create some infrastructure around so anyone can come and get a numeric domain.
One possible solution to this is LDAP. A catalog server could build a cache of O and CN objects and associate them various locator attributes (like IP addresses, domain names and SRV RRs). This wouldn't even qualify as theoretical really, it would be pretty easy to do. But then we'd be back into delegation authority, naming conflicts, certs and everything else. Plus we'd have a bunch of new problems like normalized data ("John Doe", "Doe, John" or "J. Doe"?). I think an expansion of the TLD catalog will eventually solve the problem. ICANN is moving that direction (ploddingly slow but it is motion). Probably ought to see how that plays out before we invent something that is worse than DNS. -- Eric A. Hall http://www.ehsco.com/ Internet Core Protocols http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/coreprot/