Re: ID on DNS TLD for private networks

["Eric A. Hall" <ehall@ehsco.com>]

> I'm co-author of an I-D proposing a new TLD for
> private networks.

> I'd be interested in comments on and suggestions
> regarding the draft

The BEST practice is to register domain names to ensure that collisions
do not occur.

   For example,  Acme Corp may choose  "acme.pri" for their private 
   domain name.   They configure their DNS server to be authority for 
   ".pri" and "acme.pri", whilst all domains outside of the ".pri" 
   domain will be resolved via public DNS servers.  Should Acme Corp 
   wish to make its private domain names accessible to Cowboy Corp, who 
   use the private domain "cowboy.pri", then the two organisations 
   simply merge and synchronize their ".pri" zones. 

The problems start to occur when Cowboy Boots merges with Cowboy Hats,
and they have to merge their private copies of cowboy.pri to avoid name
collision while still managing independent delegation of the shared
namespace. Good luck on that!

The BEST way to avoid these kinds of problems is to encourage people to
register domains when they need them, thereby ensuring that collisions
do not occur. If they won't do that, encourage them to at least use
sub-domains under an existing domain registration.

This is the same kind of problems that crop up with private addressing.
One of the goals behind that was to stop people from assigned IP
addresses so that collision between internal and external network
numbers was reduced. However, everybody used the same numbers so
collision still occurs whenever mergers or VPNs are established. For
example, Cowboy Boots and Cowboy Hats both use 10.0.0.xxx, and after
they hook up they are still faced with collision problems until one of
them renumbers. If they had gotten official addresses through legitimate
channels, there wouldn't be any collision with ANY addresses. [granted
there are lots of other issues here like the difficulties in actually
obtaining a private block of addresses from ARIN, but the central point
is still valid: collisions still happen]

The same is going to be true with .pri domain names. We should be
encouraging people to ensure uniqueness through registration, rather
than promoting duplicate allocations through non-registration. This
should also be a matter of policy.

-- 
Eric A. Hall                                      http://www.ehsco.com/
Internet Core Protocols        http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/coreprot/