Re: aaaa rrs, icann, and rssac

[Rob Austein <sra@hactrn.net>]

At Mon, 03 Feb 2003 12:41:46 -0800, Fred Baker wrote:
> 
> At 02:04 PM 2/3/2003 -0500, Rob Austein wrote:
> >- icann doesn't want to include aaaa rrs in the root zone until they
> >   have opinions from technical folks on what this will do to the
> >   operational net.
> 
> this is *so*stupid*. They can change or add or drop a ccTLD from the root 
> servers without a thought because something political happened, but they 
> want an environmental impact report for anything else.

while i agree with the sentiment, it's not quite that stupid.

adding aaaa rrs in certain places really would require careful thought
(in particular, adding aaaa rrs to the glue associated with the root
ns rrset, which is what determines the number of root servers[*]).
what the .jp zone admins are asking for is probably not a big deal,
but on the whole having louis admit his technical incompetence to
determine the difference between these two csaes seems preferable to
the alternative.

this is not to condone icann's failure to handle this (or any other)
issue in a timely fashion, but that's a separate problem.   please
don't beat them up when they accidently do something right :)

> Would it be helpful to have (as I have often been asked by folks on a 
> certain side of the TLD debate) for an Internet draft that says the 
> problems are business issues, not technical issues?

thanks, but, imho, probably not.

[*] ignoring anycast, which has its own issues.