At 03:13 PM 8/6/2002 -0500, Stephen Sprunk wrote: >Perhaps having multiple roots *with identical information* would be stable and >workable, but that requirement inherently negates the motivation for having >multiple roots. from that perspective, we have multiple roots now - 13 of them - and call it a "single root". The reason we can call it that is that they are indistinguishable from one another from the perspective of the information they deliver - ask any of them for example.com and they will invariably point you to a .com server, and if you ask a .com server, it will point you to the appropriate prefix for that name. As you say, what is being asked for is multiple roots with different and uncoordinated information. What this requires, of course, is for the end system to know all the roots it might need to ask, and have a magic decoder ring that tells it which root to ask about which name. This is fine if the TLD itself tells you which root to ask, but if someone adds a root to the net that is not generally known, then most end systems trying to translate the name will generally be unable to do so. I, personally, find that kind of service pointless - why use a name which nobody can translate into an address?