On Tue, Jan 02, 2018 at 04:54:54PM -0500, Dave Burstein <daveb@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote a message of 176 lines which said: > I would think that could have several different technical solutions > beyond a single root. No. And if someone challenges this "no", I ask for references (not one-paragraph ads, or YouTube videos, but actual technical publications and running code). > The Google & Amazon clouds and worldwide distributed databases show > many possibilities, I would think. Bad example since Google or Amazon is a company, with an internal hierarchy. They can always set rules and make every actor in their distributed system follow it. Distributed systems are possible (I wouldn't say easy) when there is one management / one root. The hard part is when there are several actors, without a Leader. The great thing about the Internet is not the protocols, they have nothing extraordinary. The great thing is that it is a network of several actors, without clear hierarchical relations between them. That's the hard part. > Roots that regularly update each other, so that both have the same > data. What if there is a conflict? If two roots create .home to two different actors? In single-organization distributed databases, there are rules for that (such as "the router with the lowest ID wins"). But in the Internet? > Separate roots that maintained logically separated data. For > example, .ru, .cn, all TLDs with Chinese Russian or Portuguese could > be in the new system. Queries could automatically go based on > TLDs. Cached and duplicate servers could pull from both, Not sure I understand what you propose here. It seems too sketchy to be actually discussed. > ICANN probably would have no choice but to obey a court order to > shut down connections to Palestine, where a majority supported > Hamas, on U.S. terrorist lists. What if the factions we oppose took > over Libya, Somalia, or Mali. In theory, yes, ICANN can remove from the root a ccTLD. This is certainly a concern. (I agree with Brian Carpenter here.) In practice, well, we don't have to speculate, the case actually occurred and, here, ICANN handled it well, and refused to remove .ir <http://www.circleid.com/posts/20160802_court_of_appeals_avoids_doomsday_effect_in_iran_cctld_decision/>. Until now, all the ccTLD removed were with their "agreement". That's why .su is still there.