Saving the Net (Linux Journal) [LWN.net]

Saving the Net (Linux Journal)

Posted Nov 18, 2005 8:55 UTC (Fri) by job (subscriber, #670) [Link]

Did you miss the whole discussion lately? You can't possibly have, it's been all over the media the last month. Yes they do, they control the whole root zone, and that's the whole problem that the UN and EU has been fighting against.

At least set up the root zone distributed so that each country can control it's own DNS. Or at least remove the american government's veto over the root zone (which is something that they promised to do ten years ago but the current president has declared will not happend as he has used this veto).

That would make the rest of the (free) world more than satisfied. But it looks like that won't happend for the forseeable future.

Saving the Net (Linux Journal)

Posted Nov 18, 2005 14:28 UTC (Fri) by copsewood (subscriber, #199) [Link]

No I havn't been missing the discussion. Just following it from a non-US perspective. If ICANN were to use their theoretical ability to change the DNS records that, for example, delegate the .uk TLD to Nominet without the consent and demand of the UK Internet community for such a change, this would lead very quickly to the setting up of alternate and more reputable root servers than those which ICANN have demonstrated themselves capable of managing. The rest of the world including the US would simply move on, and leave ICANN behind.

We have a similar constitutional understanding in relation to our (the UK's) head of state's ability to veto legislation and to appoint and disolve governments. If she tried to do this outside of the consent of the electorate, the UK Republic would be established within days and not weeks. ICANNs authority over the delegation of two letter TLDs is similarly of vestigial and ceremonial significance only - unless you are talking about occasional changes in delegation of 2 letter TLDs for islands on the Pacific whose only Internet presence is a small Internet cafe, or countries like Iraq where the US decides to bomb the entire Internet infrastructure into oblivion and invade anyway.

Saving the Net (Linux Journal)

Posted Nov 19, 2005 10:54 UTC (Sat) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]

Rather than just echo what the other reply to this says, I'd add that many Americans wrongly believe that they have _operational_ control over the root servers. That hasn't been true for years, more than a decade by now. Operational control over the thirteen named servers A-M is spread over diverse organisations as you can see on http://www.root-servers.org/

The reason for /those/ organisations rather than any others is mostly historical accident. I'd be happy to see some of them replaced, but only so long as the replacements were experienced, technically competent and able to make a long-term commitment to provide service.

Saving the Net (Linux Journal)

Posted Nov 19, 2005 12:39 UTC (Sat) by copsewood (subscriber, #199) [Link]

Interesting. A presentation at this site indicates to me that replacement of the root zone publisher, if the current publisher were not to guard its reputation extremely carefully, could be accomplished in a matter of days rather than weeks. I'd not appreciated the extent of current organisational seperation of publisher and printer of the root zone - this seems to confirm my case about the ability of the world to leave ICANN behind if it puts a foot wrong.