[CWG-Stewardship] CWG response on .ARPA (Fwd: Re: [NRO-IANAXFER] Questions from the ICG)

[Andrew Sullivan]

On Thu, Oct 08, 2015 at 02:39:18PM +0100, Seun Ojedeji wrote:
> Well I did not say its all about .ARPA as i correlated my statement with
> "related strings" but does your statement removes the fact that IP6.ARPA or
> URN.ARPA are second level string (domains) of .ARPA (which is the first
> level domain). What happens to IP6.ARPA if .ARPA is no longer in existence
> due to whatever decision that is made by CSC/IFR?

I agree that would be very bad.  The IAB has already pointed out,
however, that the IFR language needs to be adjusted so that it is does
not apply to IETF decisions.

Anyway, if the CSC or IFR actually made a decision that removed arpa,
I think we'd be in a crisis of such epic proportions that the problems
resulting from the missing reverse mappings would look tiny.  (After
all, reverse mappings are badly maintained on the Internet generally
anyway -- the RIRs do a good job but lots of other people blow it.)  I
think if we get to that stage, the very idea of "co-ordination" would
have broken down so badly that the entire oversight model would be in
question.  Indeed, it's hard to imagine an arpa change of the sort you
are talking about that wouldn't result in a speedy global abandoning
of the IANA root in favour of some other, sanely-operated root.
DNSSEC makes that painful, but not impossible.

People keep approaching these issues as though there is real power to
enforce illegitimate decisions.  But the Internet doesn't work that
way, and if we do things that are sufficiently bone-headed we will
find ourselves irrelevant in short order.  In my opinion, that's a
good thing.  It's that technical feature -- permissionless innovation
at the edge -- that's got us this far.

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
ajs at anvilwalrusden.com