Subject: Re: The Future of IANA

From: "William Allen Simpson" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 3 Feb 98 08:33:39 GMT

> From: Gordon Cook <[email-masked]>
> A public process started in the Internet technical community over a
> year ago that resulted in the gTLD-MoU and the subsequent development
> of the POC and CORE groups.
>
> 	Cook: What Jon does not state was that this process was not
> 	sufficiently public in the minds of many and never achieved
> 	rough consensus agreement within the community.
>
It did not?  How are you defining community?  How are you defining
consensus?  Heck, how are you defining rough?

The user community, the operations community, the engineering community,
the financial community, and even the intellectual property community,
were all represented.  The suggested alternatives, discussions, and
final results were all made in public and ON LINE!  They are still
on-line for anyone's perusal.  How much more public do you want?

IANA reports to the IAB.  The IAB is the judge of the matter, with
appeal to the ISoc.  The IAB appears to be satisfied that rough
consensus was achieved, as evidenced by their concurrance and
appointments.  No appeal to the ISoc has been published.

> It now appears that the government has explicitly recognized the
> factors that motivated this Internet community effort, and that the
> interests of the government and Internet community are converging.
>
Postel appears to be accurate in this observation.  The "green" paper
has the same salient points that the previous discussions over several
years have agreed upon (on this list and elsewhere).  The only problem
is that the government is a couple of years behind us.

> 	Cook: I would like to ask Jon then how he considers his
> 	unannounced action of late last Wednesday in diverting eight
> 	of root servers to point to his B server at ISI on the eve of the
> 	publication of the green paper to be equivalent to a constructive
> 	dialogue?
>
Unannounced?  Gosh, the timing has been on the gTLD-MoU pages for months.

It is the green paper that "serendipitously" appeared just after the
operations began testing.  Perhaps in your capacity as all knowing
pundit, you could explain the coincidence?

> As a verification that such a transfer can be accomplished smoothly and
> without interruption to the operational service, a test is being
> performed to rearrange the flow of root zone information.  Once this
> test is completed the arrangements may revert to the previous
> arrangements.
>
> 	Cook: This verification I am told is *not* a matter of technical
> 	concern or doubt.  It is simply doable.  From a technical point
>       of view there is no need for a test.

Goodness gracious, you need a bit more experience in operations as an
engineer.  Speaking in my ISP role, I don't make as small a change as
upgrading a mail server without checking that I can run from the backup
version, and of course we check that we can run off the DNS secondary
(by deliberately taking down the primary) at least once a month!  Sure,
it better be doable.  Trust, but verify.... ;-)

> 	While, It would be impossible for anybody but an expert to tell
> 	what the root servers were pointed at, I have been told today by
> 	those with first hand knowledge that at least some of the
> 	rootservers were still pointed at B this morning. There appear
> 	not to have been any operational problems associated with Jon's
> 	test. B loads from A, and always has, so absent the inflamatory
> 	insertion of new gtlds, the configuration of a root server would
>       be identical regardless of where it tooks its root zone from.

"always has"???  Actually, A is much more recent than B.  The names are
just labels, and do not imply any precedence.  B is far more important
than A.  And some of the others are older than either....

> 	Nevertheless I still must ask 'Why"? this provocative muscle
> 	flexing at this sensitive time?
>
I don't understand your reasoning.  The time has been scheduled since
at least October 1997.

The only provocative muscle flexing that I see is from the US
government, publishing a paper on the eve of the new CORE database
installation.  The paper even agrees on the need for exactly the remedy
that the Internet processes have already begun.  That paper is just too
little, too late.

> 	If Jon changes the root, and then uses that change to insert the
>       CORE gtlds, there will be serious legal consequences.

Perhaps you could be more specific?  Criminal?  Civil?  You are a party
to an action against IANA?

> 	Cook: Fine but where are we if 8 of the 12 root servers continue
> 	to point to root server B?   Jon can choose to sever accepting
>  	updates from A at any moment.
>
Yes, of course, he can -- that's part of his job.  He's the responsible
party.  That's why he was appointed to head IANA by the IAB (you and I
were not)!

Now, you should not take any of my comments to mean that I always agree
with everything that Postel says or does.  I argue with him often, and
find fault with many of the details of his decisions or actions (and
worse, inactions).  He's not a great speaker or writer or editor or
manager.

But, he has long been involved in the Internet process of consensus and
cooperation.  He's spoken well enough to get his ideas across, and
others have carried the torch.  He's written well enough that his
designs can be implemented, and others have profited.  He's editted well
enough (or more truthfully brought together a good staff) that the
series for which he is best known is a tremendous legacy upon which we
all rely.  He's managed well enough that the funding has held our core
processes together thus far (and many of us know the tedious continual
effort at grant writing and meeting going and personal commitment that
entails in today's academic environment).

I've only been doing this network stuff for a bit over 20 years, but
I've spoken and written and editted and sheparded grants.  He's been
going around and around the track with us worms.

Remember that most of the root DNS servers are run by volunteers.  When
push comes to shove, they are more likely to follow the devil they know
than the devil they don't know.

It's a community, and there _is_ consensus.

[email-masked]
    Key fingerprint =  17 40 5E 67 15 6F 31 26  DD 0D B9 9B 6A 15 2C 32

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 03 Feb 1998 10:59:15 -0500

How does this description reconcile with:

>At 10:24 PM 2/2/98 -0600, Jim Fleming wrote:
>>=============================================
>>
>>@@@@@ http://rs.internic.net/nsf/nis/sectionM.html
>>
>>M.3 IANA Manager and Advisory Panel Chairman
>>
>>"Network Solutions proposes Mr. Jon Postel as the IANA Manager and
>>Chairman of the Advisory Panel for the NREN NIS Manager project. He
>>will provide services as an employee of USC's Information Sciences
>>Institute (ISI), subcontractor to Network Solutions."

Regards,

Jay Fenello
President, Iperdome, Inc.  
404-250-3242  http://www.iperdome.com