[RSSAC Caucus] From Jeff - Messaging Workshop: Explaining the Root Server System

[Robert Carolina]

Hi Paul

You mentioned that the "ISOC briefings written by daniel karrenberg... still seem accurate to me...."

First, I am grateful to you for having pointed out the material written by Daniel Kaarrenberg when I asked last year (at IETF 117, San Francisco) for ANY materials that present the process of address resolution from the perspective of activities typically triggered by the end user. His essay was helpful in more ways than one.

This is not a question so much about the accuracy or inaccuracy of existing DNS training materials and explainer documents. I accept that most of them (and anything from Danial Karranberg, especially) will be accurate.

The gap that we are trying to fill is to create a body of explanation that can be understood and digested by various non-expert readers who need to understand both the purpose of the root server system, as well as the nature of the real-world impact that the RSS has on Internet operations.

In other words, "accuracy" (on its own) is insufficient. We need a body of material that is accurate, that explains the role of the RSS in an operational (not hypothetical) setting, and that gives policy makers and decision makers (whether their background is in engineering, accounting, business, or liberal arts) sufficient resource to open a meaningful dialogue with us. In the process of making materials understandable we also find it necessary to avoid the use of some engineering terms that act as linguistic "false friends" in the world of politics and policy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_friend

As with any project designed to educate non-experts we have made knowing decisions to sacrifice completeness for the sake of simplifying some of the material. For example, we feel there is very little marginal utility in explaining glue records to policy makers - so we have not attempted to do so.

"Accurate" and "understandable" are two different targets. As I see it, the world of DNS has a plentiful supply of materials that are accurate and some that are not. However, the world of DNS suffers from a shortage of materials that are sufficiently "understandable" to the layman to build a foundation for meaningful dialogue. On this latter point, we continue to gather valuable feedback from selected test audiences and we have already found significant utility using the current draft material to explain ourselves.

Jeff will be discussing this when we convene the working session on Thursday morning.


Kind regards

Rob


--
Robert Carolina
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Internet Systems Consortium
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> On 10 Jun 2024, at 21:00, Paul Vixie via rssac-caucus <rssac-caucus at icann.org> wrote:
> 
> team, can we review the problem statement that yielded this draft?
> 
> this ITU briefing written by john klensin...
> 
> https://www.itu.int/ITU-T/worksem/multilingual/papers/I-Klensin.pdf
> 
> ...refers to three ISOC briefings written by daniel karrenberg...
> 
> https://www.isoc.org/briefings/
> 
> ...which, aside from being hosted in The Wayback Machine for some reason, still seem accurate to me. what gaps does RSSAC hope to fill beyond re-hosting these briefing documents somewhere in icann.org <http://icann.org/> or rssac.org <http://rssac.org/>?
> 
> vixie

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