Subject: Re: Worst case question I guess

From: [email-masked] (Dan Kolis)
Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2003 09:46:42 -0500

Maybe its like the saying "when all you have is a hammer, everything looks
like a nail". The global funds transfer system (SWIFT) used for transferring
billions of dollars an hour had a security scare and fell back to an almost
manual system for a few days. It worked fine functionally (slightly slower
than the automated one), and left clerks all over the world exhausted from
overtime, using codebooks instead of programs. But they got thru the
security problem without serious incidents at all. With basically a near no
technology solution. I mean, Napolean would recognize a one time pad
codebook solution!

IETF is going to have its babies taken away one at a time by a political
process which serves no ones interests well. Unless you are in the (World
War) WW x (x=fill in the blank) fan club, for instance. And, its a bad
thing, for everyone, and since nobody got a huge moral and functional head
start to stop it, it's inevitable as (acid) rain.

Worrying about the trouble resolution schemes is a feel good excercise
comparing to worrying about the intention of the people involved. More of
the next masters care about which polititian overrules which domain name
more then whether the thing works. First cannonball over the deck is some
massive, extended argument over whether the disputed territories between:
  Taiwan / R.O.C.
  Russia / Japan
  Israel / Palestine
  The Koreas

is which. And the 'solution' to what is a non-problem functionally, will be
blockades, hyjacking, etc of the DNS to disempower one side or the other.

It seems to me my preferred solution is no official solution, but some
techno fire drills with all parties welcome. Under the upcoming envionment,
the best possible is complete distributed responsibility. Of course the bad
thing is inevitably different DNS servers will serve up different Ip's for
some controversial DNS zones. Which is the worse of the two worse cases...
that, or having political processes delete unpopular viewpoints.

When polititians find out they can squelch opinion by something as simple as
a court order to delete a DNS entry, it won't take a week before instances
of it are common. The only reason they haven't is they don't understand
technology enough to know exactly how well this would work. They will.

>As has been pointed out on this list, the actual rate of changes 
>in the root zone is on the order of a few per week. 
>Statistically, that means your 24 hour rollback might, often, 
>have zero effect.   Now compare this to the change rate in some 
>very large ccTLD or gTLD, which is, I would assume, measured in 
>the thousands per day range.
>     john

Dan Kolis - Lindsay Electronics Ltd [email-masked]
50 Mary Street West, Lindsay Ontario Canada K9V 2S7
(705) 324-2196  X272             (705) 324-5474 Fax
An ISO 9001 Company; 
/Document end

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From: jfcm <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 09 Dec 2003 17:56:56 +0100

>technology enough to know exactly how well this would work. They will.

Don't be afraid. There is a reality and there is the ICANN hirearchical 
permitted vision of it. People use to be cute and stubborn.

Politicians have found that a very long ago. And this is the whole issue 
today. They even found that GW did not need a court order to attack their 
country in using the Internet weapon.

Resistance also found that a long ago. e-Underground in many countries, 
including USA, uses hosts.txt to access cancelled sites. The only 
difference is that it goes faster.
jfc