The "RIGHT" way, absent a clear and compelling need to do it is DON'T. I will now clarify... In order to make such a change, the following criteria should be required prior to consideration: 1. There must be a clear and compelling reason for the change. Verisign's financial gain isn't a clear and compelling reason for the entire internet. Providing better directory assistance an innovative features might be, but... 2. There must be no alternative method for implementing the "clear and compelling" capability or service which could be implemented without such radical or abrupt change. 3. It must not pose any significant or demonstrable risk to existing infrastructure. If it meets these criteria, then, it should be proposed to the appropriate body and be discussed in the community. If there is general community support for moving forward, the community should be involved in developing the implementation schedule and details. During this process any further issues with cooperation or interoperation with existing services should be identified, discussed, tested, and mitigations developed where appropriate. In any case where the communty does not feel adequate mitigation exists, the proposal should be postponed until such time as these issues are resolved. Verisign's proposal might marginally meet 1. It definitely doesn't meet 2, and, it certainly doesn't meet 3. As such, we should simply not do it. Owen --On Wednesday, October 22, 2003 12:16:08 PM -0400 Terry Baranski <tbaranski@mail.com> wrote:
Christian Kuhtz wrote:
So, since there won't be a flag day, ...
Maybe that's the point. The notion of Internet flag days has largely disappeared as the Internet's ubiquity and criticality have increased. There won't be flag days for IPv6, S(o)BGP, BGP-5, etc.
So what's a company like Verisign to do when they want to substantially change the way the COM and NET zones work? (And is the answer different if they want to make these changes solely for their own financial gain?) If an incremental rollout isn't possible here, then folks end up in the fairly rare position of trying to figure out how to roll out a significant change that will affect the entire Internet at what will essentially be the flip of a switch. Clearly, "pulling a Verisign" and doing it without notifying anybody beforehand isn't the right way. But this alone doesn't make it much easier to decide what *is* the right way.
-Terry