That works, up until the point where India decides to use a different alternative root solution than China does.
The only people affected by this are the people who run the alternative root used by China because, presumably, it means that they lose some business to a competitor who has won the Indian market.
That works, up until the point where the inexperienced alternative root operators screw something up and their entire "expanded" Internet goes down, while the real root servers continue normal operations.
Yes, and Google works until they screw something up and their wonderful search engine goes down while Excite and Yahoo et al. continue normal operations. These things happen and one would hope that the customers of this alternative root system make sure that their supplier has resiliency superior or equal to the ICANN root system. Some people may be shocked that I said "superior" in that sentence but consider that these alternative roots are likely to be more regional than the ICANN root and thus they could put more servers throughout a specific region than the ICANN roots can afford to set up.
The balkanization of the 'net is something to be avoided at all possible costs.
My company makes good money off balkanization of the 'net and we are definitely *NOT* the only one. AOL has always operated a network apart from the rest. The Internet is so big now that some balkanization is inevitable and it can even be a good thing. Do your customers care how fast they can get to http://www.satka.ru or http://www.vernon.ca
What matters is that there can be only one root.
One ring rule them all, One ring to find them, One ring to bring them all And in the darkness BIND them Isn't that what the Berkeley Internet Naming Daemon does? Some people think that this is too much like a single point of failure and that the right thing to do is to route around this by creating alternative root systems. They may be right and they may be wrong, but the only way to find out is to let them have a go. It has been almost 10 years now since the first alternative root (Alternic) started operation. The fact that this has not simply faded away shows that there may be something to it. Remember, the public root systems are not attacking the ICANN root infrastructure at the network layer in any way. They are not impeding the ability of the ICANN roots to function and they are not stopping people from following your "only one root" model. Their entrepreneurial spirit is consistent with the free and open way in which the Internet has developed. Remember the paraphrase from Voltaire: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" --Michael Dillon