Subject: Re: [IGOVAP]Re:another discussion about management of root server

From: Franck Martin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2005 14:57:38 +1200

Why so many people are interested in DNS governance?

Because they hardly know how it works and assume a lot of things which 
are wrong!

I would be curious to know if any of these people on the list you gave 
ever attended an ICANN or IETF meeting. Have you ever been to such meeting.

Do you know there is a program to put root servers in africa (and the 
rest of the world). If your country needs a root server it can be easily 
installed for about USD30,000 all inclusive. You need some bandwidth 
too. Nobody will oppose it. For instance there are root-servers in 
Australia (20million of people) and New Zealand(4Million).

About security, DNS and DNS peering. It is all discussed on the IETF 
(from a technical point of view) and on ICANN from a management point of 
view. If you want to have a peering DNS, then we are in the wrong forum 
to discuss it, because you need technical people that understand the 
Internet protocol to design them. You can give some broad guidelines but 
someobdy has to implement it. Please ask again this question on the IETF 
mailing list and you will get your answers.

If you want to design such thing, as I said the IETF accept any 
submission. What makes any submission a standard, it is because it is 
adopted by all. You will have therefore to do an implementation. You can 
play with your root-server, I don't think somebody will stop you, and if 
it looks great than somebody will use your software or take your 
specifications to do the same.

At nealy every IETF meeting there is a DNS security talk where new 
security concepts are discussed. Security is complex, difficult and need 
specialists. The DNS is fairly reliable, I have no numbers, but I would 
be curious if someone could give some reliability figures of their 
root-servers (uptime) and how many incidents happened with the root servers.

Saying all that, it would be a mistake by IETF and ICANN not to be 
represented at these meeting, so that they can advocate and teach people 
how things work. The main problem of technical people is that as you say 
they are not patient, especially if you have not done your home work. I 
will try to be patient ;)

I do hope, I'm directing you to some areas where you will find some 
answers. I copy this e-mail to the IETF so they can join us in this 
interesting discussion.

I take also the opportunity to add something else on another subject:
ICANN, IETF, APNIC and other meetings are really easy to attend, they 
are video casted, audio casted and even text casted in chat/forum like 
channels. You can easily participate from the confort of your home. I 
did it a couple of times. This is not true with any of the WSIS related 
meeting, where you need to sit in the room, with the proper 
accreditation. I think in some sessions, non-representatives of 
governments were asked to leave the room.

Cheers.

xie wei wrote:

>Why the people in this forum are so impatient? As you
>said if the DNS system of Internet is perfect and
>unassailable, why WGIG listed it on the table
>“Inventory of Public Policy Issues”, and lot of
>members of WGIG have interested in it? Please look at
>the following table, it’s from the WGIG.
>-------------------------------------------------------
>
>Equitable Distribution of Resources |  Total number   
> of members willing to consider contributing text |
>Names	|Lead/List|
>------------------------------------------------------
> 	 	
>Administration of Internet names and IP addresses |	18
>|	   Kleinw&auml;chter, Sakamaki,    Bicalho, Jensen,
>Al-darrab,    Hassan, Sarr, Hu, Bertola,    Esmat,
>Cheon, Esseboom,    Zangl, Echeberria, Zens,    
>Pisanty, Drake, Sha’ban   | Jensen[wgig-ip] |
>------------------------------------------------------
> Administration of root server system	| 15	   |
>Kleinw&auml;chter, Sakamaki,       Bicalho, Jensen,
>Al-darrab,     Miller, Hu, Bertola, Cheon,    
>Esseboom, Zangl,      Echeberria, Zens, Drake,     
>Sha’ban	| Miller[wgig-root]|
>-------------------------------------------------------
> 
>Well, in fact the reason I sent the mail to this forum
>yesterday, is not to censure the ICANN or APNIC or any
>others. On the contrary, I greatly appreciate their
>efforts for the efficiency, reliability and
>speed of the DNS. 
>
>Why they do so much work on it? Maybe, they also
>consider that the number of the root server was not
>enough and the spreading the root server over the
>Internet is a necessary. 
>
>I know that all the efforts they made are available
>now. But I think adding the mirror should not the only
>solution for the problems of DNS. There are still
>further approaches to address the security issue and
>performance issue of the DNS.
>
>For example, to establish a logical peer network
>between each ccTLD server and gTLD server while the
>tree structure is retained within ccTLD and gTLD
>themselves. The domain name resolution can be done
>through the peer network between ccTLD and gTLD
>servers instead of the root server. 
>
>I am not very sure about the feasibility of this
>method. and I am here waiting the “ban
>zhuan”(Chinese, means comment).
>
>
>  
>

-- 
Franck Martin
ICT Specialist
[email-masked]
SOPAC, Fiji
GPG Key fingerprint = 44A4 8AE4 392A 3B92 FDF9  D9C6 BE79 9E60 81D9 1320
"Toute connaissance est une reponse a une question" G.Bachelard

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https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

---

From: "Ang Peng Hwa \(Assoc Prof\)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2005 11:54:09 +0800

> -----Original Message-----

> From: [email-masked]
[mailto:[email-masked]]

> On Behalf Of Franck Martin

> Sent: Thursday, January 20, 2005 10:58 AM

> To: xie wei; [email-masked]; [email-masked]

> Subject: Re: [IGOVAP]Re:another discussion about management of root
server

> are wrong!

Franck is at least partly right: there is interest (concern?) over the
DNS because they do not fully understand how it works. And in a way,
it's a very human reaction.

1.     There is some element of control over the Internet through the
DNS. An entire country's ccTLD can be turned off at source. It's
goodnight Internet.

2.     The language used in the discourse is that the domain names are a
resource. There was a Wired story back at height of the boom that for
the dotcom tld, every single noun in the English dictionary was used
minus perhaps a dozen or even fewer. Governments understand resource. It
is limited (the Wired story proves it) and whoever has more of it wins.
Therefore resource needs to be shared, parcelled out, divided equitably,
etc.

3.     The US government took the discussion of domain names from the
Internet White Paper Forum (back in the last century) and put that in
the hands of ICANN. And then ICANN became incorporated in the USA. Ok,
here's what it looks like to someone who does not fully understand the
matter: imagine Caveman Grog among cavemen. Grog's neighbour Drog is
seen one day carrying a rock into his (nicer) cave. The rock never ever
leaves the cave after that. If you were Grog, what would you think of
the rock? It's an imperfect analogy (hence the use of groggy names) but
you get the idea: when things appear hidden or scarce, they take on an
aura of mystery.

4.     ICANN screwed up. Plain and simple. Milton Mueller's excellent if
somewhat dry book says it. If ICANN had allayed earlier suspicion,
things would be far different.

> governments were asked to leave the room.

 

Regards,

Peng Hwa

---

From: "Ang Peng Hwa \(Assoc Prof\)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2005 12:11:47 +0800

I was groggier than I thought. Wasted one of my three allowed postings
when my finger sent off my earlier post without permission.

> governments were asked to leave the room.

We spent some hours debating this. A couple of points:

1.     The WGIG is a UN committee in that we are appointed by Kofi Annan
himself (he used the word "personally" in his letter). A few of us did
ask in fact for webcasting but we do have to respect the UN work and
meeting culture, which is different from that of the internet community.
The big meeting is an avenue for larger consultations.

2.     The WGIG *does not* set any laws or policies. Our output is
intended to go the UN SG and then to the WSIS where the "negotiations"
are to take place. We are therefore like a think-tank for the WSIS.

3.     Following from #2, we therefore try to be as objective as
possible. Taking a personal example, I am a consumer advocate in
Singapore but I just posted a point on the discussion in spam
highlighting a concern of business. What this means is that to do the
work, we cannot be subject to external pressures "in the course of"
doing the work. The work itself can be examined when done by various
pressure and interest groups but not during the work itself.

4.     Are there examples of such a way of working? Well, there is the
Chatham House rule.

Regards,

Peng Hwa

---

From: "Ang Peng Hwa \(Assoc Prof\)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2005 12:22:31 +0800

Hmm, it's my upgraded-Windows commands.

4.     Because the nature of the work, a closed door discussion *during*
the work is helpful to allow "incomplete" thoughts. Take my example
earlier of spam. If I were a representative of a consumer association, I
would probably have been slammed when I returned for "advancing the
interests of business" just for trying to round off the discussion. I
think everyone in the group is aware that we will all be thinking
"incomplete thoughts" that could make us look bad or foolish if it were
all put on display.

5.     This is not to deny transparency. The WGIG is adopting the
Chatham House rule http://www.riia.org/index.php?id=14: words and ideas
may be used but may not be attributed. Which is interesting because the
Chatham mechanism was designed so that civil servants in the UK could
bounce off wild ideas. Should the ideas turn out to laughably
unworkable, no one is blamed for being dumb. This encourages other ideas
to be tested in a forum before they are implemented.

At the larger meeting, most people expressed their understanding of our
constraints. The most vehement voice for openness came from a delegate
from a country most of us would consider closed. 

Regards,

Peng Hwa

---

From: Will McAfee <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2005 09:49:59 -0500

It is my opinion that an organization independent of any other
ineterests should be placed in charge of the root servers.  This way,
no one organization can claim ownership of the DNS roots.