+1 to Andrew's comments. To further emphasize a key point, the core issue is that the DNS *name space* is hierarchical. That has nothing to do with roots and how things are implemented underneath the covers. The name space itself is hierarchical -- that is where the "mathematics" come in. That means that someone or something has to decide what names are allowed at the top of the hierarchy. That means you have to have some entitity (e.g., ICANN) that says ".com" is OK, ".bozo" is not. Sure, one can come up with all sorts of clever schemes/algorithms/processes for deciding what names should be allowed (and who owns them), but fundamentally, someone or something has to decide (e.g., you need an ICANN). And I can guarantee you that no matter how the decision is made, someone or some group will scream "not fair", "corrupt", etc., etc. when they aren't able to get their name. So any talk about having a different/better naming scheme is really just wishful thinking and a mostly a waste of everybody's time. If there was a better system, some set of smart folk would surely have already clued the rest of us in on what that was. Anyone remember Tim Bass? Thomas Andrew Sullivan <ajs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > On Tue, Jan 07, 2014 at 11:29:04AM -0500, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote: > > It didn't have to be a tree, it could have been something else, we could > > still change it. > Gee, Phill, I love it when people elide the exact point I made when > selectively quoting, and then chide me for not having made that point. > Yes, it could be something else. In the logically-possible world in > which I am a mud puddle, I spend less time responding to emails about > the nature of naming on the Internet. But both the naming system on > the Internet and I (perhaps unhappily for one of us) exist in this > world. The Internet as it stands uses the DNS, a tree-structured name > space. A tree-structured name space has, by definition, a unique > root, due to the math in this universe.[1],[2] > > Describing this as having a single root conflates a large number of issues > > and essentially commits to a particular conclusion. A uniform namespace is > > a requirement, a single 'root' is not. > I wasn't claiming a single root is a requirement for a uniform name > space; I don't care about that question. I was suggesting that, given > that we have the DNS and it is the name system that is actually > deployed, we have right now a requirement for a unique root in that > name system. If you want to make up a new non-DNS naming system and > deploy it and get the world to use it, please go nuts. I have plenty > of complaints about the DNS and the way it works. I suggest that the > history of IPv6 deployment prior to the actual exhaustion of the IPv4 > number space gives us a pretty good lesson in the likelihood of non-DNS > global naming taking off without some killer feature. In my opinion, > "Doesn't make Vladimir Putin grumpy," is unlikely to be the killer > feature that will cause people to change whatever invisible naming > system they use to bootstrap the applications on their tablets or find > Google or Bing. > Best regards, > A > > [1] To acknowledge Avri's point elsewhere in this thread, yes, it is > possible to have a different CLASS with different RDATA at the name > owner name and RRTYPE. The name space is still tree shaped with a > unique root, in that the owner names persist across all CLASSes. This > is perhaps not quite as obvious as one would like in RFCs 1034, 1035, > and maybe 2181. DNSEXT attempted to do something about this a few > years ago, but we didn't get any traction so we gave up. > It is undoubtedly the case that there was some reason people didn't do > something about the difficulties with CLASSes. One of the explanations, > of course, is that if we were going to fix the DNS at that basic a > level, we might as well replace it completely with something else that > doesn't have the properties we'd be trying to repair. > [2] I refuse to have a position on whether there is a logically > possible world in which mathematical tree structures do not by > definition have a single root. Possible-worlds semantics over > mathematical proofs was probably too hard for me when I actually did > possible-worlds semantics work, and by now I've forgotten most of that > Latin. > -- > Andrew Sullivan > ajs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx