Re: [ifwp] Re: announcement from the Berkman Center

[Jeff Williams <jwkckid1@ix.netcom.com>]

Craig and all,

Craig Simon wrote:

> Chuck Gomes wrote:
> > What CRITICAL functions is the IANA currently performing?  What would happen to
> > those functions if IANA did not perform them?
>
> This is more of a policy question than a technical one.

  It certainly is, we agree.

>
>
> As a editor/publisher of Internet standards, the IANA serves as the fulcrum of a
> collaborative effort, the focal point of a social arrangement. Similarly, the
> root is a fulcrum and focal point of the DNS. People who willingly point their
> nameservers to the legacy root system thereby constitute a social assembly and
> are simultaneously regulated by the rules of that practice.
>
> How critical is it that some individuals with formal authority preside over a
> unified root? That's a political decision. Technically, yes, physical Internet
> connectivity could be sustained without formal authority, but I'm concerned that
> the norm of interoperability would be undermined. I don't see much virtue in a
> split root, and I think the IANA provides the best hedge against that.

  The IANA does not hold the rains in providing a stable Root structure alone.NSI is
that operator of A.Root, and without their cooperation there would not
be a stable root structure. So to give the IANA this responsibility and credit is
incorrect.

>
>
> Without some commitment to central stewardship over the root, there would be
> lots more experimentation, wildcatting, entrepreneurship, radical innovation,
> quickening obsolescence, etc. Things would be more chaotic.

  This is YOUR opinion.  It certainly is not a fact, but a wild assumption.

> Some people want it
> that way, because it implies nice payoffs for a few winners when things shake
> out. Also, innovation and free markets rank high among the holy grails of modern
> consumerism, so the idea of opening things up to chaos exerts a powerful
> ideological hold on people.

  Through innovation comes advances in technology, which the US and many of thefree
worlds economies are based and will be based in the foreseeable future.

>
>
> However, as Rob Austein once put it, the prospects of a wild root are
> "exciting... too exciting."

  He seems to be prone to overstatement.

>
>
> The social/political decision to construct an Internet standards framework that
> includes the IANA has led to widely distributed payoffs. The 1996 Postel drafts,
> and then the gTLD-MoU in my view were all oriented toward facilitating greater
> scalability in the DNS without allowing things to explode into disorder.

  They were originally this is true.  But after the leadership of the MoUvmenttook
them several steps further, the Postal draft was completely abandon and exchanged
for a forced takeover by a non-open process of s "Chosen few" with no stakeholder
oversight mechanism of all of the DNS.  This was its downfall.  And we are thankful
for that downfall.

> This
> implied the prospect of fewer big winners, but also many fewer losers, so that
> people (novice consumers/new users) who are eventually drawn into new gTLD
> categories won't find themselves displaced or gouged.

  Yet that was all a facade.  It would have gorged the internet stakeholder and
futureinternet user or DN holder to higher cost for a DN by 200% and only in exchange
for
7 new choices of gTLD's to register DN's in.  Not a very good exchange.

>
>
> Is it "wistful" to prefer stability in this case? That's a judgment call.
> Standards simultaneously constrain and enable, and this produces an inevitable
> tension. From where I sit, given current technology and administrative options,
> an IANA-coordinated root promises to do more good than harm.

  Problem is that the IANA doesn't coordinate the root structure.  They can't
evenstabilize the ccTLD situation.

>
>
> yours,
>
> Craig Simon
>
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 Regards,

--
Jeffrey A. Williams
DIR. Internet Network Eng/SR. Java/CORBA Development Eng.
Information Network Eng. Group. INEG. INC.
E-Mail jwkckid1@ix.netcom.com