Re: Postel's draft

[Simon Higgs <simon@higgs.com>]

At 2:06 PM -0800 11/22/96, Dave Crocker wrote:

> At 09:07 AM -0800 11/22/96, Jon Postel wrote:
> >Admitting to a small bias in the matter:
> >	Do what the "postel draft" says to do.
>
> 	I'm about to make a very careful request and will preface it with
> another request, and that is that you read my careful request carefully:
>
> 	The Postel Draft has been around for quite awhile and has been
> discussed quite a bit.  I'm not looking to rehash, re-open, or re-explore
> the fine-grained details of its pluses and minuses.
>
> 	I WOULD, however, like to get terse, direct, simple statements
> about its perceived benefits and detriments.  I think it will help the
> committee to get an aggregated view of the proposal's standing among the
> Internet community.
>

The principle premise is correct, but the plan puts the focus in the
wrong places:

1. It puts registries in a more important light than the TLDs they support.

2. The plan focuses on creating TLDs to justify the existance of the new
   registries - "I wanna be a registry, here's my three TLDs".

3. It makes no effort to keep the quality of the namespace consistant. The
   namespace needs to designed first for long term cohesiveness. Registration
   services are support services to that structure.

4. It replicates the existing NSI monpoly situation with each new registry,
   which will no doubt replicate the legal and name disputes that
already exist.

5. It fails to seperate the TLD & registry application processes. TLDs may need
   to be created for functional reasons, but not delegated to the requesting
   organization. Most of the existing TLDs qualify here.

6. It doesn't address namespace conflicts.

7. It mentions money without an accounting/auditing procedure for registries to
   follow. Monitoring active hosts within DNS tables is one idea, but it
   can't follow actual income/fluctuating price structuring.



What should happen (IMHO):

1. Postel draft covers the registry application process.

2. Another draft covers the TLD application process.

3. draft-higgs-tld-cat replaces RFC1591 and covers the namespace structure in
   which the two application processes reside.

All three docs still need some work.

(I'll even admit a little bias too!)


Simon

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