[ncc-services-wg] Re: Allow DNSMON services to monitor ENUM domains

Ondrej, I raised a number of issues about this proposal when you  
first presented this to the ENUM WG. To the best of my knowledge  
these have still not been resolved.

Wearing no hats, my concerns are as follows:

1 DNS Monitoring is not a core NCC service. It should not be doing  
this IMO. It's OK for the NCC to monitor its own name servers, but  
that's all.

2 By offering a commercial DNS Monitoring service, the NCC is  
distorting the market. Its presence presents other organisations from  
offering similar services because the barrier to entry has been  
artificially increased. And on top of that the NCC has cherry-picked  
the best customers.

3 The costs of the NCC's DNS monitoring service are not clear. Which  
raises the prospect of complaints about monopoly membership fees  
cross-subsidising non-core commercial activities. This is a  
particular worry of mine given that the NCC's initial investment in  
name server monitoring was met from its membership fees.

4 If any monitoring of ENUM delegations was to be done by the NCC, it  
must only be at the request of the Administration concerned. This  
avoids issues about national sovereignty. I accept this is unlikely  
to be a concern for many countries. But that will not be the case in  
the parts of the world that are hostile to Internet governance in its  
broadest sense being outside an international treaty organisation. It  
would not be wise IMO to open another window for those sorts of  
complaints and attacks.


Issues 1-3 have parallels with the historical situation of the NCC  
providing DNS service for ccTLDs. That situation is beginning to get  
untangled. And for the same reasons outlined above: non-core service,  
competition concerns, cross-subsidy, etc. It seems unwise to be  
opening up the same can of worms all over again just as an earlier  
one is starting to get cleared up.