Re: draft-iab-unique-dns-root-00.txt

["Donald E. Eastlake 3rd" <dee3@torque.pothole.com>]

All of the IETF "standards" are without legal force and adopted by
people for their mutual benefit.  One of the greatest strengths of the
DNS system is that it is so easy to set up a set of root servers so
you know that if people are using the generally accepted root, it is
their choice.  Ignoring strictly local additions to local clones of
the generally accepted root, the Internet has chosen to continue with
the one generally accepted root.  Even at the shrillest points of the
argument, no more than 1/2 % of the net chose to use "enhanced" or
other variants.  This RFC documents why it would be chaos is there
were variant global DNS roots.

Apparently enough people keep coming with schemes involving multiple
different roots that an authoritative statement of the problems with
that was needed.

Even if it is just to save the time of people having to repeated
explain this, it is probably worth having this document.

Donald

From:  "Bret A. Fausett" <baf@fausett.com>
User-Agent:  Microsoft Outlook Express Macintosh Edition - 5.0 (1513)
Date:  Fri, 25 Feb 2000 20:04:36 -0800
To:  <dnsop@cafax.se>
Message-ID:  <B4DC90D4.149E%baf@fausett.com>
In-Reply-To:  <20000224152124.D7468@songbird.com>

>I just want to go on record as saying that I see the proposed statement as
>wholly unnecessary. At present, market forces have kept the overwhelming
>majority of users within the so called "unique DNS root." For present
>purposes, market forces (and not a standards document, even if solely
>informational) seem adequate to accomplish the desired result.
>
>Why suggest something that is already in effect?
>
>        -- Bret Fausett
>