On Mon, 9 Feb 2004, Donovan Hill wrote:

: This is a formal request to ICANN that they hand over the root server to a : not-for-profit organization. I nominate ISC for this task.

And here, I had thought that most of *.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. were ISC-sponsored, mostly not-for-profit/academic/subsidized servers as it was. To be sure, VeriSign does not control the majority of such servers. 8-)

Nope. VSGN - A, J ISI/EP - B Cogent - C UMD - D NASA - E ISC - F DISA - G USArmy - H Autonomica - I (se) RIPE - K (nl) ICANN - L WIDE - M (jp) ISC controls -one- instance. With anycast, they have lots of copies of "F", but ISC does not sponser any of the other operators or their operations.

You're probably confused that ROOT-SERVERS.NET. != GTLD-SERVERS.NET. The latter hosts COM. and NET. and is run exclusively by VeriSign.

-- -- Todd Vierling <tv@duh.org> <tv@pobox.com>

lists@lazyeyez.net (Donovan Hill) writes:

...

thanks for your vote of confidence. here are some facts you should know:

1. there are 13 root servers, not one.

gah! I did mean plural.

in that case i disagree. no single entity should control all of the servers.

...

2. isc already runs one (f-root).

You should be the authority IMO.

i think the selection of the authority needs to be made by a wider audience. for example, by some assembly of icann. the community of interest in root name service is world wide, not north american.

...

3. icann doesn't formally read nanog.

Yeah. I think I'll send a letter.

or go to the next icann meeting in rome. or both. -- Paul Vixie

On Tue, 10 Feb 2004 14:03:52 EST, "Stephen J. Wilcox" said:

Also, if you spend some time thinking about this you will soon realise that its a bad idea for one organisation to control the roots. In fact it works nicely if you find 13 different organisations.

I'll overlook the additional fact that the actual root nameservers are being run in a way that anybody who believes in RFC2826 is, in general, fairly happy with (modulo the occasional RFC2870 issue). Most of the complaints seem centered around the management of the servers [a-m].gtld-servers.net, which is a totally different beast.

On Tue, 10 Feb 2004 14:40:49 EST, "Stephen J. Wilcox" said:

Is the problem with the management of the servers of the administration of the com/net domains?

By all accounts I've heard, the servers reliably serve up the contents of the zones they have been given. The problem is that some people have the foolish notion that the servers should be allowed to report the non-existence of something, rather than returning misleading information. I'll let others decide whether that's "administration of the com/net domains" fault for putting the data in the zone that created that situation, or whether it's "server managers" fault for accepting the data as correct. That sufficient tap-dancing? ;) (For the record, I have *absolutely* nothing wrong with somebody offering a service "If you got an NXDOMAIN, re-try it here and we'll do a search for you", and software that optionally does such a retry. I even don't mind the existence of several such services competing. What I *do* mind is when one group uses its monopoly on a resource to impose a "where do you want to go today?" rather than giving me the NXDOMAIN and the choice....)