I have edited the to/cc to eliminate the duplicates. Enough is enough;-)... ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ I just want to clarify one aspect of what Ed Gerck said, by replying to his message to the IETF as included below. ORSC has never added any TLD that already existed in the IANA cum ICANN root. Perhaps some predecessors committed such acts before ORSC was formed, but certainly never since ORSC was established. One of our policies has always been to reject any attempt of anyone to introduce any collisions among all known TLDs. We have also worked successfully to to resolve all conflicts that threatened to "cleanliness" of the ORSC root. This was done mostly be Richard Sexton tracking down the historical facts of each case and cajoling conflict prone parties to find some way to resolve their conflicts. I musty say I am very impressed with his results, and of course with his efforts. But, we also understand that completeness of inclusion is a very important aspect, thus, the ORSC root servers also carry all the TLDs that exist in the ICANN root. Root service users should be required to decide between two non-intersecting global root subsets! At least one alternative should be a full meld of the whole DNS namespace. So, the ORSC objective is (and has been since the ORSC confederation was activated) active in being both inclusive, and opposed to allowing conflicts. Thus users of the ORSC roots see "the Whole Internet" and users of the ICANN root see the ICANN subset of the Internet. All of this went very well until ICANN chose to add a new TLD that conflicted with our ORSC .BIZ TLD which was a long time member in good standing in the ORSC "family. We and others tried to find some way to resolve the conflict, but have not (until just today) been able to even exchange a singe message about this situation with anyone from ICANN. We are hopeful that we might now be able to make some progress in resolving this collision. We are and have always been dedicated to resolving conflicts so as to avoid populating any root service with a conflicted TLD. It has been and is hard work to maintain our policy position, but our ORSC members have been strongly supportive of our conflict handling policy, and had it not been for unilateral ICANN actions, there would be no conflicts now. With some cooperation, we surely could have found some way to avoid the .BIZ conflict. Those of you who like to blame ORSC for all things bad about the DNS may not like to learn who it was that "broke the DNS peace" but that will not change the historical facts. You will just have to live with the facts of history. In the meantime, we hope to find a way to resolve things in the near future. The current problem is purely political, and can be resolved with cooperative, collegial coordination. That is all that is needed. All the other problems discussed here by Ed are certainly very important, but it is also important to clear the decks of the current political problems that stand in the way of sensible discussions. Until these other technical problems are resolved, we still need to find a reasonable way to live together on this planet. Cheers...\Stef At 3:14 PM -0700 7/29/02, Ed Gerck wrote: >All: > >The DNS is indeed defined as a hierarchical tree and thus must >have only one root. It will not work with more than one root. > >What Richard and Stef are saying, in short, is in agreeement with >that in the sense that they recognized you would need an *additional* >control structure in order to use multiple roots AND the DNS. > >But, adding multiple roots will NOT do away with the single root -- >as Brian noted. That additional control structure for the "multiple >roots" must still be controlled by someone -- and here is where we >go back in a circle, Brian notes. > >However, what Richard is saying would create a delegation mechanism >to the root, for those who want to use it. Those who do not want to use >it, would still see only the DNS root. Richard is not solving the DNS >control problem, he is just proposing a way to create a delegation >mechanism that is entirely optional for the user to see. > >That said, this logic implies that operators of root A cannot complain if >operators of root B define a TLD that conflicts with a TLD in root A. >Thus, operators of an alternate root cannot complain if the DNS operators >add .BIZ to the DNS TLDs and control it. An alternate root operator could >also add .COM to their namespace and control it. Operators of intranets >do it all the time. > >Cheers, >Ed Gerck