[dns-wg] Re: WG response to root scaling studies

Jim,

On Oct 16, 2009, at 4:06 AM, Jim Reid wrote:
> Yes, 1 million TLDs is ridiculous and very probably unattainable under the current ICANN system. However there was an ICANN paper that last year said "if .com can have ~100M delegations, so can the root". See http://www.icann.org/en/topics/dns-stability-draft-paper-06feb08.pdf. On p4 under "II Capacity of the Root Zone", it says "At a minimum, the DNS should be able to function at its current level with at least 60 million TLDs. This allows significant room for large-scale expansion without concerns about a negative effect on stability." I wonder who wrote that...

The paper is not saying that because COM has tens of millions of names that the root MUST have tens of millions of names, rather it is stating that the root, like any other zone in the DNS, can scale to tens of millions albeit there would be operational impact.  Two sentences above the quote you provided is the following:

"Even if not all of these names are actually propagated to the zone, the size of the .COM zone indicates that it is technically possible to have a zone that has registrations numbering in the tens of millions."

> Now us technical people realise those claims are beyond ridiculous.

Actually, no.  It _is_ technically possible to have tens of millions of names in the root (or any other zone).  Given the current system, it would be a stunningly bad _operational_ idea and would require changes to many aspects of root management (e.g., the provisioning side of root zone management would have to be completely replaced, root servers would have to be upgraded to hold 64GB RAM, bandwidth to far off root instances would have to be upgraded, etc.), but it really is _technically_ possible.  In fact, the paper you reference specifically states:

"The staff has made a distinction between technical instability (that causes direct adverse impact to the DNS) and operational impacts which may not be harmful to the Internet technically, but do impose operational challenges in the management and operation of the DNS."

> The current proposals for new gTLDs point the way here. The gNSO effectively said "let there be thousands of gTLDs". ICANN management then pretty much said "The community has spoken. We will do what the process determined.".

Can you provide a reason (other than "because I don't like it") that ICANN shouldn't abide by the decision of the open, bottom-up policy development process of the GNSO?

> So if/when the gNSO says "let's have millions of TLDs: we have an ICANN paper which says it's feasible and won't create instability", I would not bet against ICANN staff trying to devise a process to make that happen.

Two points:

1) many folks in the technical community refuse to get involved in ICANN policy deliberations because they believe it's that icky non-technical political stuff.  Unfortunately, this can lead to a lack of technical input into those deliberations, resulting in decisions that can be skewed towards business or political considerations.  If the technical community believes a certain outcome would be sub-optimal, I would strongly encourage members of that community to get more involved in policy discussions.

2) ICANN's Bylaws states:

"Section 2. CORE VALUES

In performing its mission, the following core values should guide the decisions and actions of ICANN:

1. Preserving and enhancing the operational stability, reliability, security, and global interoperability of the Internet.

..."

Any action by ICANN management is constrained by ICANN Bylaws.  The point of the root scaling study was to determine where growth of the root zone would have negative impact on "operational stability, reliability, security, and global interoperability".  If the addition of millions of TLDs can be demonstrated to negatively impact operational stability, reliability , security, and/or global interoperability, ICANN staff would _not_ make it happen.

Regards,
-drc