> > things don't stay in the cache forever, and there are various > > reasons why cache entries can go away before the TTL has expired. > > To the degree that this is true (which it is), it is also true for the > existing ~250 TLDs. yes. > > no. a few hundred million hosts using (on average) two dozen popular TLDs > > will generate twice the load on the roots as the same number of hosts using > > (on average) a dozen popular TLDs. > > That only holds true if the number of queries also doubles. no, all that is necessary is that there be a single query for each of the "popular" TLDs at each resolver for every time the cached NS record for that TLD at that resolver goes away. (that's what I mean by "popular"). so an increase in TLDs can cause the load on the root servers to increase drastically without the number of end-system queries increasing at all - all that is needed is for those queries to exhibit less locality of reference than before. > > read the statement again. *someone* has to decide whch TLDs are "handed out > > ". > > we can argue about the criteria that should be used to influence such > > decisions, but there are still decisions that have to be made. > > There are policy decisions which have to be made which control how the > process goes, certainly. But there is absolutely no reason that ICANN > needs to decide on which specific TLDs are created. *somebody* has to do it, and that *somebody* is inherently going to be under a lot of pressure from conflicting and often powerful interests - and hence that *somebody* is going to be controversial - whether or not that *somebody* is ICANN. Keith