In message <LLEOLJEDPHOFANPCPKOMGEAPCCAA.mikebat@tmcs.net>, "Mike Batchelor" wr ites:

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Now - I'll *readily* agree that "ICANN versus new.net" is political, and probably worth discussing. However, I'm going to have to start putting Bozo Flags on people who *still* claim that RFC2826 is political just because it points out that Things Will Provably Break if you have conflicting roots.

Well DUH! I totally agree that conflicting roots break things. But I don't think that conflicting roots is an inevitable consequence of having multiple roots, or even multiple root zones.

I still say it's a self-serving statement with political motivations, and I hope I have adequately explained why I think that. I don't expect you to agree with me, but I hope I'm not as Bozotic as you thought at first.

I'm sorry -- I still don't see your point. We agree that conflicts are bad. *All* RFC 2826 says is that you need to agree on the root zone, assuming that you agree that there's a conflict between a delegation and non-existence of a zone. 2826 says *nothing* about where that zone comes from, how you agree on it, etc. It does not mandate ICANN. It does not mandate the current 13 root servers (though I'll note that that limit comes from the 512-byte limit on DNS packets, and that DNS cache contamination means that you may end up believing in different root *servers* than you thought you believed in, if you send the wrong query to a site that adheres to a different root religion). If you can build a *working* root zone with no conflicts -- full agreement on what all the TLDs are and to whom they're delegated; no conflicting claims (and delegations) to the One True .xxx; no dissatisfied people stomping off and building the Even More Open Pacific Root Zone Conglomerate -- it will be in full compliance with 2826 and I won't have a single technical complaint. To be sure, I might have my doubts that you can build such a thing, especially the part about no conflicts -- but I've been saying ever since this whole topic came up that the worst possible outcome was more than one root. Nothing that has happened in the interim has changed my mind about that. --Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb