[dns-operations] CoDoNS and the future of Internet governance (Was: DNS Ops Pre-NANOG Meeting

[Stephane Bortzmeyer]

[I won't be in NANOG, which is purely North America so I discuss the
case here.]

On Thu, May 11, 2006 at 11:08:47PM -0700,
 David Ulevitch <davidu at everydns.net> wrote 
 a message of 42 lines which said:

> What I want to do is raise some discussion about how changing the
> fundamental implementations of the DNS in such a revolutionary way
> changes the entire structure, operation and politics of the DNS.
> Where do groups like ICANN then fit in?  What about the root-servers
> and the TLDs?

May be I did not understood CoDoNS enough but I believe it only
addresses the *resolution* of domain names, not their
*allocation*. The domain names resolved by CoDoNS are still
hierarchical and therefore, while root nameservers will be impacted,
ICANN and TLD registries will not.

[Compare with the telephone system, where there are no "root
nameservers" - resolution of "TLDs" is distributed - but there is
still a root, the ITU. Also, there are DNS registries which deal only
with allocation but not with resolution, like Afilias for ".org".]

[True, the CoDoNS paper claims that it will allow competitive
operators for TLD but it seems mostly a marketing argument, no detail
is given, and the difference between resolving names and allocating
them is not drawn.]