Re: ISPs as stakeholders

[Jim Dixon <jdd@matthew.uk1.vbc.net>]

On Tue, 2 Dec 1997, Kent Crispin wrote:

> > If a court in Virginia were to shut down CORE, the other 200+ registries
> > in the world would continue to run.  
> 
> If a court in Virginia were to shut down NSI tomorrow, for 3 months,
> let's say, the other 200 registries would continue to run, but
> nonetheless, significant damage would be done to many companies 
> around the world.

It's worth exploring this scenario.  Let's say that this Virginia court
really shuts down NSI: they send in the sheriff, turn off its computers,
shut off the power, put padlocks on the doors.  What happens?

Well, the rest of the root name servers continue to operate.  All of
the names in the com/net/org and the other domains continue to be
resolved.  Nobody would disappear from the Internet.  The 
registration of names in com/net/org would halt.

Almost certainly the operators of the other root name servers would
confer and within a few days select one of the other root name servers
to be primary.  There would be a number of emergency meetings and
small conferences.  

People would decide what to do.  They might choose to resume 
registrations in com/net/org.  They might chooose to just ask new
registrants to shift to the national TLDs for a while.  The exact
course chosen would depend upon the reasons given by the court
for closing down NSI.

My guess would be that the decision would be to replace NSI, which
had proved so vulnerable, with a more resilient distributed 
structure, one which could better tolerate this kind of failure.
You could put .NET in one jurisdiction, .ORG in another, perhaps
split up .COM into several new TLDs, scattering them around
various countries.

It's a tolerable risk.  In fact it sounds to me like it could very well
be an improvement.

Who would the signficant damage be done to?


But we were talking about someone shutting down CORE, .firm, and .shop.  
Now that's a very tolerable risk. ;-)

--
Jim Dixon                                                 Managing Director
VBCnet GB Ltd                http://www.vbc.net        tel +44 117 929 1316
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Member of Council                                                 President
Internet Services Providers Association                       EuroISPA EEIG
http://www.ispa.org.uk                              http://www.euroispa.org
tel +44 171 976 0679                                     tel +32 2 503 2265