> From: Brian E Carpenter > Since the DNS is a hierarchical namespace, and since trees have one > root, if you add "alternate roots", you then discover that you have > to uniquely name them, i.e. insert a new unique root "above" > the various > "alternate roots". > > Or to put it another way, if we need several naming > authorities, one for > each "alternate root", we're going to need a naming authority > to uniquely > name those naming authorities. that's true, but this is not the complete truth. For example, even if IANA were this "meta-naming autorithy", they could just issue names "a00001" "a00002" ... in a first-come, first-served base. Since those labels do not carry any semantic meaning, this should not be much of an issue. And if people object, they could just assign "names" in a random order. The second thing to notice is that at this point every user could in principle decide *in which order set the search default* if he does not want to add the meta-root: something like dialing a national number without the international prefix. This said, I still think that having multiple roots is a Bad Thing, because it gives much more hassles than advantages: but I don't think it is fair to give an answer hiding workable solutions. ciao, .mau.