[73204] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Verisign vs. ICANN
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Patrick W Gilmore)
Mon Aug 16 16:40:34 2004
In-Reply-To: <g3y8kergcz.fsf@sa.vix.com>
Cc: Patrick W Gilmore <patrick@ianai.net>
From: Patrick W Gilmore <patrick@ianai.net>
Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2004 16:29:48 -0400
To: nanog@merit.edu
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
On Aug 16, 2004, at 4:13 PM, Paul Vixie wrote:
> patrick@ianai.net (Patrick W Gilmore) writes:
>
>>> PS: I will patent it myself to prevent Versign from doing this.
>>
>> And if they do, what's to stop the root operators from doing this.
>
> the root server operators don't act collectively.
While correct, your statement does not answer the original question. :)
>> Remember, there are 13 IPs no one can get around - no other "TLD" to
>> register your domain name.
>
> according to the whackos, we are the "legacy root" operators, and folks
> ought to feel free to point their resolvers at any of the "alternative
> root" operators instead. YMMV.
Let's confine the discussion to the 99.99% of us who use the Internet
.. uh .. "normally". (Best description I could think up.)
I mean, they are called "whackos" for a reason.
>> Flipped on its head, what's to stop the root operators from
>> circumventing anything Verisign or any other TLD operator does?
>
> root server operators don't control the root zone, they only publish
> it.
> some combination of itu (via the iso3166 process), icann/iana,
> ietf/iab,
> and us-DoC are the folks you'd go to if you wanted a toplevel wildcard.
Actually, the root server operators absolutely do _control_ the root
zone in very obvious operationally relevant ways.
Whether that control could be used - improperly or not - to, say,
insert a wildcard record strikes me as much the same question as the
Verisign action which started this thread....
--
TTFN,
patrick
