Some people can continue to play games. Most peple involved in the Registry Industry have moved beyond this and are now deploying real servers on real networks. In my opinion, there is still a lot of room on the "Root 64" chessboard. This board is 8 by 8 and has room for 8 Root Name Server Confederations, each with 8 Root Name Servers. At the moment, there are only 5 Root Name Server Confederations actively in use: AlterNIC eDNS InterNIC (Legacy) name.space NSI/ISI Imagine that the board can be arranged so that the servers that are "nearest" to each other are near each other on the board. If you pick any square on the board, it has exactly 8 neighbors assuming the board wraps at the edges and is really mapped to a sphere. Because of technical limits of the current "named" technology used by many companies, people are forced to select only one Root Name Server Confederation. This is like saying that they must select all of the servers in one row of the Root 64 board. More modern versions of the "named" software will be able to work around this limit. In the future, an ISP will be able to pick a square on the board that represents the best location for that ISP from a connectivity point of view. When the ISP does that, the surrounding collection of Root Name Servers will form that ISPs confederation. In order to do this in the future, it is important to have all of the Root Name Server Confederations "in synch". To be in synch, the Root Name Servers should provide referrals for the same collection of TLDs and provide the same set of referrals to the TLD Name Servers that support that TLD. If people are really interested in working together there are three easy steps to meet the "Root 64 Challenge". 1. Develop a MERGED list of ALL of the Top Level Domains that are used any where in the world by any TLD Registry and limit the list to 2,048 names. 2. Locate the TLD Name Servers that service each Top Level Domain. 3. Make sure that all recognized Root Name Servers support the top 2,048 TLDs and provide referrals to the proper TLD Name Servers. 4. Deploy 8 Root Name Server Confederations of 8 servers each and figure out the optimal arrangement on an 8 by 8 grid based on network connections. 5. Convene the various Root Name Server Confederations to represent the 64 Root Name Servers on the board. There are 5 now, and room for 3 more. Encourage this convention to bring the 64 servers into "synch". These are real steps that will result in working systems. If the Root 64 Challenge is met, then people everywhere will have a coherent Internet and many choices on Top Level Domain Names and Root Name Server Confederations to use for support. Think global and act local... -- Jim Fleming Unir Corporation http://www.Unir.Corp Check out...http://Register.A.Mall