Jefsey,
You should also entertain the hypothesis that no one has
commented on those issues/suggestions because they are have been
discussed too many times before and are inconsistent with the
visions that drive the Internet. Some of them have even been
the subject of fairly careful evaluation and associated
statements, e.g., RFC 2826 on the unique DNS root issue (often
summarized as "which part of 'unique' are you having trouble
understanding?").
I think, as we have discussed in the past, that your vision of
the Internet and its future differs from mine and that of many,
probably most, of the people on this list. I would characterize
your picture, I hope not too inaccurately, as one in which
connectivity and the flow of information are driven (not unlike
the PSTN) by bilateral agreements between countries. In that
sort of world, different countries may reasonably establish
different views of the DNS and different address spaces, with
inter-country communications occurring through gateways that,
among other things, can keep those views and address spaces
separate.
In my world, direct, end-to-end global connectivity,
interoperability, and integrity of DNS and URI references are
very important -- for interpersonal communication, for commerce,
for intellectual development and dissemination, and perhaps even
as a religious principle. That belief has caused me to spend
most of my time in the last few years on internationalization
issues, not to empower governments, but to permit better
communication among people (and, indeed, to reduce the belief by
governments that they need to "solve" the problem, probably in
some xenophobic way).
With regard to ICANN and its processes, I don't much like the
way a good deal of that has turned out, even while I believe
that things are gradually getting better. I lament the set of
decisions that led to the US Govt deciding that it needed to be
actively involved and to some of the risks, delays, and socially
undesirable statements that situation has created. At the same
time, all of the alternatives continue to strike me as much
worse, including moving the technical/administrative issues into
forums in which variations on the theme of "we don't like
reality, so we will vote it to be different, regardless of what
they might do to the Internet or human communications in
general". So, while ICANN, IMO, continues to need careful
watching -- most importantly to be sure that it does not expand
into "governance" issues that are outside its rational scope-- I
don't see "give it to XXX" or "everyone runs off in his own
direction" as viable alternatives.
On the other hand, one of the nice things about the network as
it is now constituted is that anyone has the option of
opting-out: disconnecting, setting up a private DNS and a
private addressing system, and communicating, if at all, through
a restrictive, address-and-protocol-translating gateway. We
even know how to run IP over X.25 and X.75, and that option is
available as well. The question of who will miss anyone who
takes that opt-out option is an interesting one sociologically,
but the Internet has sufficient critical mass at this point, and
is sufficiently important commercially in most of the world,
that "opportunity to shoot yourself in the foot" might figure
into such an analysis. If you are convinced of the viability of
your ideas, by all means go off and try them: just be sure that
your namespaces and addresses don't leak into the real network.
regards,
john
--On Saturday, November 29, 2003 02:04 +0100 jfcm
<info@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> At 23:20 28/11/03, Anthony G. Atkielski wrote:
>> > I am sure that many security officers or generals would
>> > feel unatease if they known their HQ IPv6 address can be
>> > just one unknown bit different from the IPv6 address of a
>> > ennemy computer.
>>
>> Nah ... security officers and generals--if they are
>> competent--don't put their HQ computers on an open network
>> in the first place. That only happens in the movies.
>
> hmm... competence in this area is to accept that what happens
> in movies is just a small part of the real life.
>
>
> This being said, I note that this thread is only oriented to
> prospective numbering issues. May I take from that that none
> of the suggested propositions rises any concern ?
>
> In particular, that there is no problem with two parallel
> roots file if they want to be identical? What would happen if
> one was hacked? (I note that this is the current situation of
> the Internet where two deliveries of the same file are
> proposed).
>
> The same, no one comments on secondary source for the root,
> meaning that the ICANN unicity is not an intrisic need,
> provided the different root files collectors strive to collect
> the real data from the TLD Managers (who are authoritative,
> while the root file is not). Not a problem to anyone?
>
> No one either comment on private TLDs, or the creation of a
> virtual TLD used through Host.txt only. No one objects to the
> generalization of users resolvers, the possible resulting
> dissemination of the root file to all the users and their
> resulting ability to fight an ICANN redelegation what is a
> major issue at WSIS.
>
> If there are no major objection I will suggest that a "Nations
> Security propositions" dratf be written as Best Practices,
> based upon the introduced suggestions and the one the
> participants may want to add. This will be introduced at the
> coming WSIS dDecember5/6th final preparatory meeting and will
> help addressing concerns expressed by several countries.
> jfc