On Tue, Jan 02, 2018 at 12:08:56PM -0500, Dave Burstein <daveb@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote a message of 146 lines which said: > What technical measures will be needed for "robust interconnection" > if Russia and the BRICS create their own root? Vladimir Putin is > creating an alternate root <http://bit.ly/RussiaDNS>, with support > from India and China. <http://bit.ly/Bricssi> I've seen this announcement repeated in several places, always without fact-checking. So, first thing: this is a Russia-only announcement. No BRICS country every supported publically this project. There is *zero* "support from India and China". Even for Russia itself, it is not the first time there is such claims. Russia *can* create a DNS root but I'm not sure they *will*. > Censorship is a real issue but my question here is technical. How > could we make that work, if everyone is acting in good faith? Basically, you cannot. Let's ask simple questions: who will manage .home (a real example since .home, not delegated in the ICANN root, is delegated to different persons in different alternative roots)? * if there is a body to arbitrate between the competing roots, then this body is the root. May be it will be better than ICANN (it's not too difficult) and may be not. * if there is none, an URL <http://something.home/> will go to different Web sites depending on the root your resolver use. I've seen a lot of hand-waving how how a rootless system may work, but never a detailed technical analysis, covering all the cases, specially the inconvenient ones (such as .home). Same issues for alternative (non-DNS) naming systems: most sweep the problem of consistency under the carpet. (GNUnet is one of the few who honestly declare that they don't try to have unique names.)