[CCWG-ACCT] DNS

[Andrew Sullivan]

Hi,

On Mon, Apr 18, 2016 at 09:01:05AM +0200, Kavouss Arasteh wrote:

> Should there be a need to make ICANN responsible for an overall policy under which those individual entities coordinate the allocation and assignments of Names  in the Domain Name System or not? 

Not only do I not think there should be a need, I don't think there
should even be a desire.  The DNS is designed not to have that single
policy or any such sort of global rule.  It would be contrary to the
technical reality of the DNS to try to make such a rule.

RFC 2181 points out quite clearly (even more clearly than RFC 1034 --
see 2181 section 11) that names in the DNS have only restrictions
about length.  People have already implemented things that depend on
that lack of restriction.  Mostly, those implementations have been out
in the "leaf nodes", because the hierarchical nature of the DNS makes
that the wisest place to do such things.  (Compare this reasoning with
the IAB's guidance on internationalized labels -- see RFC 6912.)

Everything we have ever learned about operations on the Internet tells
us that centralised authority doesn't work.  There's no reason to
suppose this case is any different.  The DNS was designed to dispose
of a point of centralisation in the Internet -- one that caused real
operational problems.  It would be a massive retrograde step to try to
re-impose such administrative centralisation again.

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
ajs at anvilwalrusden.com