On Fri, 30 Sep 2005, Peter Dambier wrote:
I also want to take this time to criticize NANOG (North American Network Operators Group) and the inclusive and alternative namespace communities. However, my main concern is NANOG. I find the fact the people of Turkey are being the subject of technical jokes on NANOG appalling.
Not jokes, my dear Mr. Baptista, what we've been saying is "We told you so" in about 200 different forms. Chaos is not unexpected from an alternate root system, though we more expected the problems to start with technical barriers, before financial or personal ones flared up. The problem with alternate roots carrying non-universal data was documented in several RFCs with very sound technical merit, going all the way back to the Jim Fleming/AlterNIC/PacRoot heyday of alternate root servers. After all this time has passed, you willfully ignore established technical and operational facts about how global reachability is compromised by the snake oil you're peddling. Just the term "inclusive namespace" is a political PR spin term that is misleading at best, and coupled with the name "Public-Root", downright deceptive in practice. (I have to hand it to you, though; that kind of word play could earn you an official position in Washington. Oh, I see you have a "lobbyist" title already. Oy vey. 8-) And based on the previous paragraph, I can only conclude that Public-Root is not meant to take away ICANN's stranglehold -- rather, it's meant to line the Public-Root group's pockets. Unlike ORSN, which is currently being discussed on NANOG as well, Public-Root is actually *selling something*, not simply acting benevolently in the best interest of the Internet. Public-Root may be operating DNS servers that serve up a root zone, but it is not operating an "inclusive namespace", nor "Internet" root DNS servers. In reality, the term "Internet" itself was coined to identify a network of *globally universal* protocols and their trimmings (which came to include the DNS). Now, the Public-Root is actively working to reduce global reachability. That's not "inclusive"; it's *exclusive*. I'm probably taking to a brick wall here, but here I have tried to appeal to your sense of technical sanity to drop the facade and work to do the Right Thing, not the profitable thing. (Note: All this comes from someone who actually used AlterNIC's roots for about 13 months back in "the day" -- and finally realized what a bunch of crap the whole situation was. I don't necessarily expect you to come to the same realization, but I can still try to echo a common sentiment directly to you, rather than through a third party such as Mr. Dambier.) -- -- Todd Vierling <tv@duh.org> <tv@pobox.com> <todd@vierling.name>