CircleID

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Putting Multiple Root Nameserver Issue to Rest

• Comment posted Feb 24, 2006 1:03 pm PST — by JFC Morfin
  I am afraid all what Paul Vixie says sounds good, smells good, but is out of reality. It is true that outside of ICANN there is no other warranty than in the real world, where there are 192 independant states…

• Comment posted Feb 22, 2006 12:15 am PST — by JFC Morfin
  If I read this thread initiated by Paul Vixie correctly, the invitation should extend to Richard Hill. As it seems that the DNS users can see his phone numbers, but his phone numbers cannot see the Internet hosts. Or may…

A Balkanized Internet Future?

• Comment posted Jul 28, 2005 12:10 am PDT — by JFC Morfin
  I can only regret that all these good intents are just underlining the need to both partition the Internet to address the demands of nations (like China, and Chinese names are not only registered in China, since foreign entreprises wanting…

• Comment posted Jul 26, 2005 5:00 pm PDT — by JFC Morfin
  Let get real. There is the world digital ecosystem. It needs a network service. It used Tymnet I, Tymnet II, OSI, Internet. Question is "is Internet II its next bet or do we need something new?". To answer the question we know: - there are four poles of authority (power and competence): technical, political, economical and societal. Different requirements. - the network doctrine therefore needs to be centralised (nations, languages), decentralised (infrastructures, communities) and distributed (user-centric), what means a multitude of network partitions of different granularities. - the average Wi-Fi user has the communication and processing power - and the nuisance, innovation and standardisation capacity - of a nation 10 or 20 years ago. Money will not come from their internet access, but from their intelligent servicing. So there is money for needed complexity. If we compare with the preceding (both successful) partitioning experiences [Tymnet and OSI]. We had 50 to 100 nations and tested a few languages. We now have all the nations, 20.000 languages, millions of communities and billions of direct or indirect users. ICANN described in ICP-3 that the Internet always developed by users' experimentation. So, there should not be a problem, should we not be delayed by the integrism of the Internet Church of the Legacy Days (we are probably the only ones to have answered the ICP-3 call so far). Millions of "standardizers" can create, promote and progressively filter applications. They can also organise a network architecture of usage. But if they are to share the current "mono" by default internet architecture parameters (one DNS, one numbering space, one user class, one language, one IETF, one ICANN, one dominant Government, one Governance, etc. etc. and worst of all "one single language tagging" commercial based system as discussed at IETF), they must engage into competition and into business/political/vital protection from the others (cf. the long expected US Statement of Principle). Partition is here. And right now it is balkanisation: multilingualism, numbering, bandwidth, culture, etc. Now, let consider there is no more scarcity because the architecture parameters are tuned to "multiple". Instead of being subject to balkanisation we can benefit from compartmentalisation. Like in a ship's hull. It increases stability, security, risk and pollution containment, surety, etc. ... and _unity_. The Internet was called "the [physical] network of the networks", the Internet is now to become "the networks [of usage] within the network", with every user being a member (or a user) of as many externets as he wants. Robert Tréhin and Joe Rinde did it in 1977 (and OSI had it partly built-in) with Tymnet. They conceived the root name principle (creating a super TLD concept - later used in RFC 920): in a network a root name is the name of an external network (externet), of its class of users, of its group of resources, of its Registry, of its Gateway, of its Reference Centre (like the IANA), of its Governance. An externet can be an extranet or an external network look-alike within the main network (this is the rule in a global network). Domains are externets sharing the same class. ICP-3 documents the use of multiple classes and calls for their (over delayed) experimentation (we propose ccTLDs and everyone to carry it - the UNITRY project). This means that China, soccer's fans, cities, etc. can develop their _same_ "own Internet" either as a local balkanisation, or as externets co-operating to the solidity and to the unity of the global unique and pervasive Internet continuity. Obviously there is work, thinking, experimentation, testing, etc. But more than anything else there is a need for us all to convince Legacy Worshipers this is no schism but the future of their own maturing baby :-). They're other steps ahead: vernacular, multimedia, multimode, and smart. This is - in part - already prepared by IAB/IETF through OPES analysis - networked smart virtual boxes. Balkanisation is probably a necessary phase: it will convince them to study and implement the solution other technologies already tested as appropriate to the digital ecosystem. We could have saved a lot of time, money, people's pain and efforts: the DNS Integrism is probably the worst enemy of a stable, sure, secure, politically free and innovative DNS. But this is also the real world.

When Will The Internet Be Divided Among Nations?

• Comment posted Jul 26, 2005 5:37 pm PDT — by JFC Morfin
  We all know that everyone can run his own root and that sending the root file to every user or maintaining it at every PC (as for an anti-virus base) would cost ten times less bandwidth than the root servers…

About Those Root Servers

• Comment posted Aug 12, 2005 4:21 pm PDT — by JFC Morfin
  To Karl Auerbach, yes. Its seems the here an increasing gap, divide even an opposition between what the "Internet Governance" thinks and what the network is or tend to be. This is most probably due to the current commercial leadership of R&D;. RFC 3869 is to be read for the evaluation IAB gives of this leadership. But at the same time RFC 3869 seems out to be out of the picture with a "network-centric" culture of interest to sophisticated operators. It seems that IETF has reached its "X.500" days. Let get real. The secure and stable architecture we need to disseminate is user-centric and must be generalised/global for a simple reason of cost: the system I used home must transparently work everywhere in the world because I may be everywhere in the world tomorrow. It should based on three layered visions: - a "network continuity" infrastructure: a seriously structured addressing built on national basis, insuring an universal equal bandwidth access to all, whatever the medium and the protocols, at the lowest cost and greatest simplicity. This is the job of the ITU NGN. - a "network of networks" structure made of SNHN (small/stand-alone network/home network): standalone smart gateway acting as a network donjon of the network. This is the distro we all need and no one wants to develop: fire-wall, gateway to the local network, apache, mail services, named, services crons [stats, updates, back-ups], etc. It should be built as a basic Linux, BSD or QNX distro, on a personalised bootable CD sent every month to the users by their "Intelligent Services Provider" (along with the users individual requirements). It should include last updates, locales, DNS locales, etc. etc. This is the job of the Internet community: ICANN can certainly contribute in supporting the real namespace (names, numbers, tags, etc). IETF should replace RFCs by operational service slots everyone can plug as network building blocks. Simple, neat, updateable. If they do not do it, why don't we do it? - the "networks within the networks" metastructure: a myriad of externets (virtual external network look-alike) people/cpu may freely chose to participate into one or thousands, providing specialised spaces of common references (languages, cultures, nations, trade, communities, services, corporations, cities, etc.) you may chose to adapt to your own context. This is to be achieved through the intergovernance (a extension of the Plato's paradigme the WGIG should learn "fissa") of the externets governances, using - among others - a dramatic extension of the IANA concept of common reference centre. Coherence and stability like everything else in distribution must be by the people for the people, otherwise they vote with their feet. The WGIG tries to sort it out with difficulty because, if they made the correct evaluation that Government, Economy and Civil Society must share into the Governance, they did not defined what is the Internet and forgot the users. They also believed the hollywood story tale and believe the Internet technology is an US God's gift which will never change: for example that the problematic root file is other use than helping the NSA to collect real time information on the status of the world, through the DoD root server loggers. They forgot that the internet governance constitution is in the source code and that the code is now written by a technical society (many SDOs) of which some of the users are the real leaders. As NATs, VoIP, P2P, Grids, etc. show it. The situation today is rather simple. Every user has the communication, processing and on-line nuisance capacity of a full country 20 years ago. These "countries" (old and new ones) have no ITU to organise their standards together, nor the many network partitioning they need (national development and security, stability, cultural empowerment, etc. and first: multilingualism). This results in the technical balkanisation (the WGIG totally ignores), first the alt-root experiment, now China, and actually the USA removing themselves from the good guys game. At the time we need to achieve this partitioning as a compartmentalisation, not as this lethal balkanisation (the most complex move for a technology (Robert Tréhin and Joe Rinde succeeded in 1977/78 and OSI partially solved) guess what? they forget, the technical pole … The rest in another comment ... the system does not want it ....

• Comment posted Aug 11, 2005 9:46 am PDT — by JFC Morfin
  The main reason why the root servers system (a different mater from the root file) is not acceptable is its cost to operators. Because this cost must be justified or paid by someone. This cost could be drasticaly reduced in…

• Comment posted Aug 03, 2005 1:36 am PDT — by JFC Morfin
  Yes. This is what I say: instead of being in cache, the root file should be in the hint-file. And the hint-file (root.ca) to be updated with the IPv6 data. To get the root file in cache only call a…

• Comment posted Aug 02, 2005 4:37 pm PDT — by JFC Morfin
  The root IS mirrored in every namesevers. The joke is to put it in the cache with a TTL, when it should be in the root.ca file (you know the file where you only have the root servers and not…

• Comment posted Aug 02, 2005 1:33 pm PDT — by JFC Morfin
  You may remind that nearly two years ago I introduced the question of the vulnerability of nations to the Internet. I was then preparing national security meetings after having carried for two years the "dot-root" test bed along with the…

Why I Am Participating in the ORSN Project

• Comment posted Feb 28, 2007 9:50 pm PST — by JFC Morfin
  I am happy to learn that Stephane used ORSN. ORSN has a very interesting feature: loggers are not copied to the NSA. This is an interesting issue. IANAL and I have not the money to call on lawyers for that.…

• Comment posted Oct 11, 2005 8:09 am PDT — by JFC Morfin
  Paul, I keep using "PathFinder" from a pun made at that time I found interesting. Someone I read said the disute over SiteFinder rose the issue to first find the proper path. But it seems that it did not get proper recognition. My Franglish does not permit me to be sure what "JFCM spake thusly" may imply? Nor "too course grained"? What I mean is that the zone manager is the boss of his zone - the one who sovereignly decides, plugs and unplugs. This could be a basic definition of the subsidiarity principle. Ownership or stewardship are interesting issues but are secondary to the question at hand: they qualify the right, not the architectural exercise of the right. As one says "the Judge will tell if the killer had or not the right to kill, but the dead will stay dead". There is a confusion in the DNS inherited from the ARPA Internet days. When the Internet had gateways into other nets and in the public international network, a hierarchy made sense, retaining some centralisation. Once the Internet became global, that "root" hierarchy does not make sense anymore. We are in an "inter pares" "forest" decentralised situation. I accept this took time to build and will still take time and experimentation to be accepted. And this is what ORSN does, because in a decentralised system "It’s not bearable that a government can make modifications without others supervising it." But in reality the Catenet system of Louis Pouzin Vint partly used for the Internet, is distributed. Distibuted means that every zone manager is his boss. Again stewardship and ownership are different issues. Distributed also means that hierarchy is no more. This is replaced by URIs and soon by a DRS (distributed registry system) along with ISO 11179 network adapted rules (and IMHO the DNS [as a piece of architecture and code] might survive it well). I find fun all these people fighting UN because of the States involvement and wanting to protect the USG involvement, when the very distributed nature of the network is that everyone is his own boss. And NO State is involved at that level. I accept that making it work is complex. But we had 20 years to do it. Now people not only want it but have the capacity to do it. Not only as "States" as the Chinese names, what leads to balkanisation. But as individuals, what leads to a mess if we do not organise quick to jointly deliver what they will take by themselves. The time is no more to "alt/open-roots". The time is to personal roots. And if the USA continue saying "no way", in 80% of the world it will not only be considered as fun, but as patriotic! I submit we have a real problem.

• Comment posted Oct 09, 2005 11:27 pm PDT — by JFC Morfin
  Milton, you may also recall what some root servers operators did with PathFinder. They entered into illegal resistance. The TLD Manager is supposed to be the boss of his zone, yet they coalized against the .com TLD Manager. Another interesting…

• Comment posted Oct 04, 2005 11:13 pm PDT — by JFC Morfin
  Hi! Paul. Please let us try not to introduce unnecessary confusion in simple things. I will therefore repeat: "there is only one single name space”: this means that a domain name is an alias, obeying a certain ABNF, for an address. Who ever creates the name or who ever decides of the address. "But that single name space may be much more complex”: this means that users may choce to use the same name several unrelated addresses. "than the mono-Internet presupposes”: means that the current usage thinks a given name must alias only one address (or only one set of related addresses), or there is conflict and confusion. In reality there are many different possibilities for a same name to aliase multiple independent addresses. This is the case today in private networks which have their legitimate alt-roots (cf. ICANN ICP-3). There is also a big technical confusion maintained between such alt-roots (for example GSMA)wich do not care to conflict since they cannot pollute one another, and open-roots which strive not to conflict. But alt-roots are NOT well supported by the "mono-Internet". This is why ICANN called in 2001 for experimentation (our dot-root project responded that call). There can however be sure, secure, stable and scalable multi-orthogonal-addresses names in a "multi-Internet". This means that the Internet architecture will have been taylored for additional parameters to resolve the conclict. This is already the case in "mono-Internet" through the gateway of an Intranet.. ICANN proposed to investigate CLASSes, what was the original solution (whith Host Groups). OSI used CUGs (closed user groups). This means that in an identified context a name may have a different meaning, or that doubt is clarified by a secondary parameter. "Con" in English and in French has the same letters and different meaning. "Paris" in France and the USA has the same letters and different locations. Two persons of the same name are differentiated by their birth date. Etc. When RobertTréhin started the international namespace no one said "there is a single divine root". We identified an existing mechanism (ISO 3166 3 alpha and Corporate logos) to acknowledge "root names". This was for a very simple reason: billing and operation statistics. Seven years later, in 1984, we had many such root names implemented, and welcame the "ARPA" root name. We had a need for quick difference between the names and the IP addresses we could receive at the gateway: a techie suggested a final "." for names. We nicknamed ARPA the "dot-root"). Our consensus of the time is translated in RFC 920, ICANN claims its legitimacy from. You will see there the mechanism we asked to build "multiorganisation TLDs" (to pay for the cost of entering new "root names"). "jefsey.com", "vixie.gprs" and "cicleid" belong to the same 1 to 256 hexatridecimal grid (including "." and "-") used as the international networks name space since 1977. There is no religion about it, nor theorem. This is a simple definition by consensus. Anyone can change it. We changed it in 1982 in accepting any other character set (but that did not took off yet :-)), and made a partition of it to reserve 14 numeric names to support ISO X.121 (this worked well). Internet made another partition: in its part of the name space you need two "." and consecutive "." are forbidden. Real Names or other did it too, supporting keywords like Netpia or the CNNIC in forbiding ".". etc. Then came the "xn--" prefix, etc. The total is still the same unique universal grid. It is like the globe: you can change the map of the mountains if you want, that does not change the mountains. The stewardship and the use of that namespace is another story where we may have different technical and commercial (pro)positions.

• Comment posted Oct 03, 2005 9:01 pm PDT — by JFC Morfin
  Folks, please let keep things clear. There is a name space. There may be several descriptions of that name space. There may be several server systems proposing access to these descriptions. These are three different layers. I started with the…

• Comment posted Oct 03, 2005 2:05 pm PDT — by JFC Morfin
  I am glad of Joe's comment. It seems that we could proceed further now. There are many issues involved in a global revision of the concepts of distributed registries and in the DNS see NewStar and GPRS where the accumulated…

• Comment posted Oct 02, 2005 2:18 am PDT — by JFC Morfin
  I am not indifferent to the reasons which are part of the architecture of the Internet. I am not indifferent to the management of the IANA file. For a more sure, stable, secure and innovation oriented DNS. But bravo: this…

Neustar and .GPRS

• Comment posted Oct 04, 2005 6:00 pm PDT — by JFC Morfin
  "Given such uncertain environment, you really cannot blame commercial operators moving ahead with their own root and TLD." The best justification of commercial alt.root I ever read. Times change. Obviously "Neustar did not intentionally create a new root or TLD;…

ICANN Gets the Root Zone, Too

• Comment posted Oct 26, 2005 6:53 pm PDT — by JFC Morfin
  very well seen. But I think this is ICANN IANA job protection stuff. The engaged battle is for the control of the IANA. ICANN, NTIA, Unicode, ITU are the challengers. DNSSEC is certainly a key point. Not only for what…

Welcome to the Root, .MOBI

• Comment posted Oct 29, 2005 12:40 pm PDT — by JFC Morfin
  MOBI from English "mob" and initial of the Occidental root "individu"; or latin plural "i". Any member of the disorderly crowd of Internet users. A specialised TLD for individual activist domain name (IADN, not to confuse with the other worldwide…

Domain Name Containing Trademark Translation is Determined Confusingly Similar

• Comment posted Feb 01, 2006 8:45 pm PST — by JFC Morfin
  Dear Shenyang, may be will you want to use Chinese names; using Chinese TLD? You can find them as well as Chinese keyword on the CNNIC site. You will note that you can use Chinese private aliases off the shelf…

Hypertext Mail Protocol (a.k.a. Stub Email): A Proposal

• Comment posted Feb 20, 2006 5:07 am PST — by JFC Morfin
  Brett, this is a very interesting input. Nathan, why not to start a mailing list on the matter. May be this would help us all. This could start a open use effort? I would be quite interested in the problems…

• Comment posted Feb 19, 2006 2:43 am PST — by JFC Morfin
  This is store and retrieve. I proposed that scheme under the name of "weemail" two years ago. You do not need the web. You can also use SMTP/FTP. It was the system I first used in 1977 on Xerox machines.…

China's New Domain Names: Lost in Translation

• Comment posted Jul 21, 2006 4:36 pm PDT — by JFC Morfin
  The lingual TLDs are different in nature. The global domain name is perceived by the user as an Internet global name. The lingual TLDs are perceived by the users as local. A Chinese.Chinese domain name is therefore perceived by the…

• Comment posted Mar 02, 2006 11:45 am PST — by JFC Morfin
  Brett, what James Seng and Steven Murdoch describe is exact. What you discuss is correct. So, what I suggest is we try to think how we would set-up an externet (now China has shown the model, we will have many…

• Comment posted Mar 01, 2006 11:42 pm PST — by JFC Morfin
  Dear Steve, it seems that you said it all and we are in full agreement. China created an externet (a external network look alike within the same digiatl ecosystem or not). This is the basic concept of the international network…

• Comment posted Mar 01, 2006 7:39 pm PST — by JFC Morfin
  Thank you Murdoch for reacting as a technician in a real world, and not as story teller. Looking at the facts and testing. This way you tell us the true story. What you describe - seen from outside - is…

Net Neutrality Is As Silly As So-Called Internet Governance

• Comment posted Jul 21, 2006 5:05 pm PDT — by JFC Morfin
  For nearly two years I oppose an IETF RFC (3066 Bis) which permits to organize language / racial / religious filtering in standardizing content language tags and develop "retro-meta-spam" (you receive a mail taged for a language or a theme:…

The Blurr-Cade Proposal on Root Zone Oversight

• Comment posted Jul 31, 2006 1:04 am PDT — by JFC Morfin
  Karl, Kieren, let be realistic the need is to insure stability where stability is needed: at the resolver level. This level is mostly today at private netwrok and ISP level, and will be more and more at individual user level.…

• Comment posted Jul 23, 2006 12:14 am PDT — by JFC Morfin
  I am afraid this proposition is utopic and I do hope the USG will resist to it. It proposes an unworkable ICANN private UN to take over the control of a file management which is only in the US best…

Lessons for the Internet Governance Forum from the IETF

• Comment posted Oct 24, 2006 10:50 pm PDT — by JFC Morfin
  Governance decisions are not decided by votes and enforced by Kings or Presidents, they are freely adhered to by consensus, or imposed by influence. RFC 3935 says that the role of the IETF is to publish documents to "influence the…

Remarkable Internet History: Equifax Invented .COM in 1975

• Comment posted Jan 09, 2008 6:09 pm PST — by JFC Morfin
  John, I think I explained more time than it was requested where COM (and .net) comes from :-). So… efx.com at that time had nothing to do with naming. (1) com was the code for Tymnet, chosen by the Philips…