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

On 16 Oct 2009, at 16:35, David Conrad wrote:

>> 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.

David, you're playing with words. Your argment here is like saying  
it's technically possible to eliminate world hunger if we gave  
everyone on the planet enough food.

Yes, I suppose anything is technically possible, given infinite  
amounts of money. And compliance with the laws of physics. But we both  
know full well that the resources needed to operate the DNS root with  
millions of TLDs are simply not available. Even if they were, there  
are plenty of other technical constraints which are not DNS  
operational considerations on making a root zone of that size. For  
example: the IANA/NTIA/Verisign three-way handshake or IANA managing  
communications with million of Sponsoring Organisations, even if these  
things were fully automated.

Of course it's possible to have a zone with millions of delegations.  
These exist already. Nobody disputes that. At least I hope not. But  
the stuff you mention above goes nowhere near a complete description  
of the technical and operational revolution that would be needed to  
bring about a root with millions of TLDs.