Who controls the net?

US DoC declaration

[activeco]

"If it's not in the mainstream, there is nothing to talk about", seems to be confirmed here in WebmasterWorld too.
Surprisingly, I couldn't find anything about one of the most important issues regarding Internet and it's control: DNS Root Servers.

"In a worrying U-turn, the US Department of Commerce (DoC) has made it clear it intends to retain control of the internet's root servers indefinitely. It was due to relinquish that control in September 2006, when its contract with overseeing body ICANN ended."

[theregister.co.uk...]

Actually, I don't understand worrying voices neither I see a big problem here.
If you don't like U.S. controlled internet, then switch to any set of root servers you want and there are plenty of them.
E.g. [orsn.org...] or [public-root.com...]

Related:
[wired.com...]

[jmccormac]

Controlling the root zone file is important for the stability of the net. Most people working on the web would probably never have seen a copy of the root zone file. But if it was corrupted or wrong, then the effects would be seen in a very dramatic way.

There was a lot of politicking by the ITU in guise of the UN over trying to get control. I personally think that the stability of the net is far more important and having the USG maintaining control is far from a bad thing. The UN, at the best of times, is not known for its organisational ability. And handing over control of the root zone file to these cretinous bureaucrats could cause massive problems. So having the USG maintain control is the best solution at the moment.

Regards...jmcc

[activeco]

The UN, at the best of times, is not known for its organisational ability. And handing over control of the root zone file to these cretinous bureaucrats could cause massive problems. So having the USG maintain control is the best solution at the moment.

You may be right about the UN bureaucracy, but most of the world outside of the U.S. is frightened by the idea of the U.S.A. taking another grip in their current "conquering-imperial" policy.

What I don't understand is why the fear?
The U.S.A. have a full right to control the root servers on its soil.
If you don't like it, ok, switch to the other ones.
As I already said, there are lot of other options available, all being compatible and in sync with current 13 servers (btw 10 being in the U.S.).

[jmccormac]

You may be right about the UN bureaucracy, but most of the world outside of the U.S. is frightened by the idea of the U.S.A. taking another grip in their current "conquering-imperial" policy.

Well I'm outside the US (in Ireland). What the USG has done is maintain the status quo and not hand over administration of the root zone file to ICANN or indeed anyone else.

What I don't understand is why the fear?
The U.S.A. have a full right to control the root servers on its soil.

A lot of it seems to be based on extrapolating US foreign policy (Iraq etc) to control over the root zone file. Most of the journalists writing about this (if indeed any did write about it beyond the technical press) would not necessarily understand what is going on.

If you don't like it, ok, switch to the another ones.
As I already said, there are lot of other options available, all being compatible and in sync with current 13 servers (btw 10 being in the U.S.).

Yep but once nameservers drop out of synch, the problems happen. With the current situation, the addition of new nameservers to the rz have to be approved. This means for example that China cannot knock the nameservers for Taiwan out of the rz.

I work on domain name analysis - producing statistics on the hosting industries of a number of countries. I've seen what happens when things go wrong on a national basis (a cctld server coming up without its cctld zone file) and on a larger scale (when a .com zonefile was missing over half its entries as happened a few years ago). Like most system administrators, I have a very conservative view point when it comes to changing anything that works.

Regards...jmcc

[Farix]

Ok, I am a layman on all of this, but I must say that I am in the "not broken, no one is doing it better, so don't fix it" camp on this one. The article from The Register read more like an opinion column then anything else. The very title of the article gives that away "Bush administration annexes internet." That is like say that New York City is annexing lower Manhattan. Oh wait a minute, lower Manhattan is already part of New York City.

I would think that there would be less doubt about the future of the Internet if USDoC maintained its control over the domain. This rubs me as having more to do with the anti-Americanism in international politics by attempting to wrestle control of a major component to the Internet from the US for no other reason then to simply remove it from US control.

[jmccormac]

This is the USG statement:
[ntia.doc.gov...]

It is a bit less extreme than the article from The Register. It is not the control over the root servers but the root servers file. This file is essentially the list of nameservers and their IPs for each TLD and ccTLD. Each country still controls its own servers and the servers for each TLD are still controlled by their respective registries.

Regards...jmcc

[Farix]

Ok, I'm now completely confused. Exactly what is the problem? Is this purely about the "Politics of Control?" For that is exactly what this seems to be.

[KingMacro]

The root zone is perhaps the one that matters the least who controls it.

with the rz there's not a lot you can really do, sure you can in theory remove a countries TLD just to annoy them, but I doubt even the US military would be that stupid.

Most of the root servers aren't owned by the US Military anyway, and many of the non-military root servers based in the US also have non-US locations as well.

The only time you need to worry is when a government says that want control of a certain TLD (other than their own ccTLD). If for example the US government tried to abuse their root servers to forcibly take control of the .com TLD so they could "fight terrorism" by shutting down any websites opposed to the US Government... Then you have a problem.

In the unlikely event that they did try to abuse their position in that way then it would throw the Internet in to chaos. ISPs would be rushing to switch their DNS servers to whichever alternate roots they find first, resulting in large numbers of ISPs all using differing roots, which will no longer be able to syncronise with a central authorative root (because they wouldn't sync to a root that everyone is running away from)

Is this a bad thing? not really, but the fact they are willing to forcibly maintain control does demonstrate that they will refuse to follow the will of an organisation representing the Internet community, which does raise questions about what else they will refuse to do.

[activeco]

Well, IMO there shouldn't be the question WHO controlls DNS root servers at all.
The control itself defies the modern meaning and spirit of the Internet.
OK, such crucial environment should be administered, but that administration must be distributed between "trusted parties" and not in hands of a single one, much like everything else on the internet.
It is not the question "will they?" but rather "can they?" which should be properly answered.
No "party" should be in control of the free exchange of information, whether it is US, UN or Eugene Kashpureff.

The article from 1998:
[wired.com...]

[jmccormac]

ICANN hardly represents the will of the internet community. Indeed it is just the usual bunch of perpetual committee joiner types that would be irrelevant in real life. The ccTLDs seem to be distancing themselves from ICANN. Perhaps USG was aware of this and decided that the stability of the system was more important.

Handing control of the rz file over to the UN/ITU would be far worse. It is really a "politics of control" story.

Regards...jmcc

[div01]

Thanks for your responses jmcc...this story seems to have generated a lot more FUD than it should.