Subject: GA-DIGEST V1 #1591
From: [email-masked] (GA-DIGEST)
To: [email-masked]

GA-DIGEST        Wednesday, February 12 2003        Volume 01 : Number 1591

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 11:31:32 +1300
From: Joop Teernstra <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: [ga] The list - atlarge vote of trust/distrust: result

At 11:17 p.m. 10/02/2003, Vittorio Bertola wrote:
>On Sat, 8 Feb 2003 13:25:54 -0600, you wrote:
>
> >Who ran the vote? Was it audited by anyone?
>
>Answers are: Joop Teernstra, and no.

And the constructive answer is to run an official, properly supervised or 
audited Poll, confirming (or not) the results of the unofficial Poll.

Another sensible question would be: why on earth would someone who has for 
5 years tried  to prove that some form of e-democracy is possible, 
undermine his own work by tampering with his polling results?

The question of why people who don't like the results attack the 
credibility of the mechanism or the person is much easier to answer.

- -joop-

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Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 23:15:07 -0000
From: "Richard Henderson" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: [ga] Esther Dyson..... - a modest clarification 

Excellent reply, Leah... once again you speak the truth and you home in on
the critical problem... representation, accountability, bottom up
governance.

My comments interspersed below, and thank you, for your intelligent
comments. Come on, Esther, you can do better than this! Can't you? How can
you, or any other ICANN acolyte, satisfactorily answer Leah's points?

- ----- Original Message -----
From: L. Gallegos <[email-masked]>

> Those who serve on
> the committee are hand picked and have not been elected.

Appalling! I don't believe any of the ALAC appointees were elected by their
own membership. They were put in place by ICANN, with ICANN deciding who is
appropriate to represent the At Large... risible!

> They are not at
> all representative of the at-large

That's true... the most recent poll showed At Large members opposed to
ICANN's structures for the At Large, by a margin of between 3 and 4 to 1.
The members don't even want to *participate* on this sham ALAC.

> and their face to face input has little
> or no meaining to the rest of us other than they ignore the comments made
> by us.

This may well be true.

>Those who "hammer out" policy details do so on their own and even
> those will be ignored.  It's business as usual - typical of ICANN.

Correct. "Top down" appointments, without democratic mandate from the people
they are *supposed* to represent, and why does ICANN have to do what they
say anyway. They don't, because they resist true democratic representation
on their Board... they prefer the EXPULSION of the democratic
representatives of the At Large, and replace them with top-down appointments
made by ICANN not by the At Large.

> ICANN has closed its doors to us
> other than the usual lip service.  Unfortunately, it is you, Esther, who
> continues to spout the lie that working with a committee that has no true
> representation of the at-large stakeholders and that has no decisive voice
> in policy making.  The board has no obligation to act on any "advice"
> given by these sham committees and has already show they will not do so.

Look at ICANN's anti-democratic track record!

>
> If and when ICANN implements true representation of all stakeholders,
> perhaps it could regain the credibility it has lost or never even
> achieved.
>
> Leah

Exactly, Leah. But ICANN is running scared of democratic representation of
the stakeholders. That's why it cast out those who were democratically
elected from its Board. No! It wants to create a "sham" At Large, designed
to "contain" and "control" a group of non-elected appointees, in order to
legitimise their reform coup, and give DoC and the media the pretence of
user participation, without its reality.

After all, Esther, when the At Large members are asked who they trust to
nurture the At large, from a list of 295 names, you came 293rd on the list,
in the opinion of actual At Large participants. A snapshot perhaps, but a
pretty damning indictment. Alas, Esther, you do *NOT* represent the At
Large, and by 4 to 1, the At Large does not trust or accept your phoney At
Large project.

This is nothing personal against Esther, whose intellect (actually) I
respect... but in terms of truth and moral authority, I have to endorse
everything that Leak says here.

Richard H

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Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 12:59:14 +1300
From: Joop Teernstra <[email-masked]>
Subject: RE: [ga] Esther Dyson..... - a modest clarification 

At 02:01 a.m. 11/02/2003, Esther Dyson wrote:
>yes... but input in person carries a lot more weight than input through 
>postings.  I believe having a physical presence will make a difference.

Speaking at 6 meetings (Singapore, Berlin, Santiago, Yokohama, Melbourne 
and Montevideo) at around $15.000 in cost has still accounted for very 
little difference as far as the cause of the Individuals' representation is 
concerned.

>Now the challenge is funding to get the people there!

That is another challenge altogether. Selective funding to "approved" 
speakers  risks making the process into a charade.
Will qualified critics who find themselves consistently rejected trust the 
impartiality of, say, Markle?

>  I.e. the ICANNwatch phrase "meaningless input" is precisely orthogonal 
> (and also contrary) to what I meant:  "influential input," delivered in person.

Can't say it hasn't been tried.

- -joop-

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Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 15:22:40 +1300
From: Joop Teernstra <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: [ga] The list - atlarge vote of trust/distrust: result

At 05:48 a.m. 11/02/2003, Andy Gardner wrote:
>At 11:17 AM +0100 2/10/03, Vittorio Bertola wrote:
> >On Sat, 8 Feb 2003 13:25:54 -0600, you wrote:
> >
> >>Who ran the vote? Was it audited by anyone?
> >
> >Answers are: Joop Teernstra, and no.
>
>That explains why I polled so low, but giving Dave Crocker a higher score
>than me clearly puts the results into question, Joop. :^)

Yes, by the logic of WXW .

- -joop-

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Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 22:17:54 -0500 (EST)
From: Joe Baptista <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: [ga] The list - atlarge vote of trust/distrust: result

On Tue, 11 Feb 2003, Joop Teernstra wrote:

> At 05:48 a.m. 11/02/2003, Andy Gardner wrote:
> >At 11:17 AM +0100 2/10/03, Vittorio Bertola wrote:
> > >On Sat, 8 Feb 2003 13:25:54 -0600, you wrote:
> > >
> > >>Who ran the vote? Was it audited by anyone?
> > >
> > >Answers are: Joop Teernstra, and no.
> >
> >That explains why I polled so low, but giving Dave Crocker a higher score
> >than me clearly puts the results into question, Joop. :^)
>
> Yes, by the logic of WXW .

dame you - don't say that incantation.  his electrons have gone missing
and we don't want to wake him.

regards
joe baptista

Joe Baptista - only at www.baptista.god

 have you seen where the Cable News Network has been
                                                      http://cnn.news/

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Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 16:47:29 +0100 (CET)
From: Marc Schneiders <[email-masked]>
Subject: [ga] The Vixie Root

There was little interest in November last, when ISC (Paul Vixie),
announced that they were going to run copies in Asia of the
f.root-servers.net, which they operate.

A similar announcement last month, that there will be a copy in Spain
of f.root also, went unnoticed, I think.

Now we hear that there will be two copies more, in the US of A. One in New
York and one in LA.

A few more and they will have their own 13. Somehow this feels quite safe.

I am very curious what ICANN thinks about this and how the DoC feels.
More so since neither of them is mentioned in the press releases of
November, January and yesterday. Do they actually know about it?

Could this be related to the reports that ICANN was to deliver at the end
of last year about the root-servers, about which absolute silence governs
from the Marina del Rey headquarters?

Who has the answers? Why are they not speaking up?

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Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 17:27:59 +0100 (CET)
From: Marc Schneiders <[email-masked]>
Subject: Suspicions (RE: [ga] whois.txt, ala robots.txt, as a standard)

On Fri, 7 Feb 2003, at 08:21 [=GMT-0500], Cade,Marilyn S - LGCRP wrote:

> Yes, I understand that some people think that domain names are
> substituable for email addresses. That's an interesting, and unproven
> model for the "average" user. Not the techie oriented crowd who hangs
> around ICANN, but those everyday users of the Internet and other
> communications services who are focused on their daily lives, and their
> businesses, not on technology and its fascinations. :-) THAT was not
> meant as in any way critical, just a note that well, there are are
> millions of email users out there and they are quite happily served by
> ISPs. AND the ISPs are quite happy serving them.

If you mean that it is difficult for the average user to set up email for
a domain name, I feel I must contradict you. You may have been right some
years back. It is now, however, not more difficult as setting up an
account in Outlook. I am thinking of registrars that offer (free) email
forwarding or mailboxes with a domain name registration.

> As to policy questions, versus personal opinions, the question of
> whether all data that is presently in the WHOIS should be there is a
> topic yet to be discussed as policy; the question of whether there is a
> need for differentiated access to data elements is yet to be discussed
> as policy.  The WHOIS TF will be recommending further policy
> examination. The final report on some of its work is published for final
> comment. When we say "final report", we mean final report about this
> particular set of work. The Council will determine further work, but I
> expect that there will be support for next steps.

Forgive me for being very, very suspicious here. Not of you, but of the
'processes'. I fear that these discussions will be stalled, like those
about the UDRP are within ICANN. Due for review end 2000 but nothing
happens. I very much get the feeling that the IntProp people are served,
and then the topic is buried effectively to avoid other interests being
taken serious, as they are counter to the wishes of the IntProp interests.

- -- 
[01] All ideas are vintage not new or perfect.
http://logoff.org/

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Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 18:14:20 +0100
From: Vittorio Bertola <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: [ga] The list - atlarge vote of trust/distrust: result

On Tue, 11 Feb 2003 11:31:32 +1300, you wrote:

>> >Who ran the vote? Was it audited by anyone?
>>
>>Answers are: Joop Teernstra, and no.
>
>And the constructive answer is to run an official, properly supervised or 
>audited Poll, confirming (or not) the results of the unofficial Poll.

Absolutely. That was in fact one of my proposals.

>Another sensible question would be: why on earth would someone who has for 
>5 years tried  to prove that some form of e-democracy is possible, 
>undermine his own work by tampering with his polling results?

I'm not saying that. I think that the results are credible, but that
nonetheless, having been obtained unofficially and without impartial
watchdogs, they can't be binding for icannatlarge.org.
- -- 
vb.                  [Vittorio Bertola - vb [at] bertola.eu.org]<---
- -------------------> http://bertola.eu.org/ <-----------------------
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Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 18:21:46 +0100 (CET)
From: Marc Schneiders <[email-masked]>
Subject: [ga] Please, comment

I see very little comment on the Whois TF report. This is now the final
version. There are many problems with it, the main being, in my view, that
only the IntProp rights are served by the ideas and proposals of the
report.

Since there is no timeline for other topics, like privacy, these will
certainly not be taken care of in the future. They serve individual
interests only. Individuals have no voice.

See what happened to the UDRP review. It was due in 2000. It has been
succesfully stalled now for over 2 years. And in the case of the UDRP
there was a timeline. For Whois there is none.

So, please, comment! This is our last chance.

The address for comments is:

[email-masked]

Do it now, as the comment period ends February 17.

Archive of comments:

http://dnso.dnso.org/dnso/dnsocomments/comments-whois/Arc03/

The report:

http://www.icann.org/gnso/whois-tf/report-06feb03.htm

Thank you for your time!

- -- 
[02] I will be happy to answer any questions.
http://logoff.org/

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Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 12:54:34 -0500 (EST)
From: Joe Baptista <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: [ga] The Vixie Root

i've asked both parties how they feel.  the doc has nothing to do with it
- - they consider what paul is doing a technical enhancement.  go figure.
and vint cerf has confirmed icann has nothing to do with it.  curious if
lynn has anything to say.

regards
joe baptista

Joe Baptista - only at www.baptista.god

  .ufo domain registration http://www.register.ufo

On Tue, 11 Feb 2003, Marc Schneiders wrote:

> There was little interest in November last, when ISC (Paul Vixie),
> announced that they were going to run copies in Asia of the
> f.root-servers.net, which they operate.
>
> A similar announcement last month, that there will be a copy in Spain
> of f.root also, went unnoticed, I think.
>
> Now we hear that there will be two copies more, in the US of A. One in New
> York and one in LA.
>
> A few more and they will have their own 13. Somehow this feels quite safe.
>
> I am very curious what ICANN thinks about this and how the DoC feels.
> More so since neither of them is mentioned in the press releases of
> November, January and yesterday. Do they actually know about it?
>
> Could this be related to the reports that ICANN was to deliver at the end
> of last year about the root-servers, about which absolute silence governs
> from the Marina del Rey headquarters?
>
> Who has the answers? Why are they not speaking up?
>
>
>
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> Send mail to [email-masked] to unsubscribe
> ("unsubscribe ga" in the body of the message).
> Archives at http://www.dnso.org/archives.html
>

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Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 12:31:39 -0800 (PST)
From: Karl Auerbach <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: [ga] The Vixie Root

On Tue, 11 Feb 2003, Marc Schneiders wrote:

> There was little interest in November last, when ISC (Paul Vixie),
> announced that they were going to run copies in Asia of the
> f.root-servers.net, which they operate.

I wouldn't say there was little interest.  In my corner of the world there
was (and is) a lot of interest.  I've been chatting about anycast roots
for years (at least since my days in the Advanced Internet Architectures
Group at Cisco.)

As a general matter, I consider anycast replicas of root servers to be "a 
good thing"(tm).

However, anycast doesn't come for free.  Anycast works by creating several
routes to a given IP address.  In reality these routes lead to different
places and a client (or rather the network routing system of the net on
which the client exists) selects which route based on various metrics,
most often a "longest prefix" match.

When an anycast server fails, that failure ought to be coupled with a
withdrawal of the routes to that server, thus causing one of the more
distant anycast replicas to be selected.

There are some problems that can come about - one, of course, occurs when 
the route is not withdrawn in conjunction with a server outage.

Another potential problem is that the fallback to the anycast alternate
looks like a routing change and that can trigger various route-flapping
dampers.  This can, potentially, leave a client in an area in which a
particular anycast server (by this I mean all instances of that server)  
might become unreachable for some period of time.  The likelyhood and
duration of these events are a) low and b) variable.  Because of the DNS 
mechanisms that fall back to other root servers the disappearance of any 
given root server isn't really a problem.

These problems can be resolved by clueful engineering of the servers
and the routing information.  And if there is one thing that the root 
server operators have in abundance it is "clue".

But I have two latent concerns:

1. I have very fuzzy, vary vague concern that if the majority of root
servers become anycast that this might open up more means to take out the
root servers.  This may well be a worry that is more appropriate for
Chicken Little, but I have this unfocused nagging concern anyway.

2. No matter how I look at things, I can't help but come to the conclusion 
that the deployment of root servers, particularly when they use a fairly 
new and innovative (but definitely not unproven) use of Internet routing, 
is something that has an obvious and significant relationship to the 
stabity of the Internet's domain name system.

Yet, when I look at the emphasis that ICANN is putting on matters that it 
has labeled as affecting "stability" of the Internet, I can't help notice 
that ICANN has given vastly greater attention to the business plans and 
business methods of DNS registrars and registries than it has to the 
deployment of new roots.

To me this seems completely out of whack - I have never felt that the
business practices of DNS registries and registrars bore even the
slightest relationship to the stability of DNS (even the more so given
that the single element of those business practices that might pertain to
stability, escrow of registration data, has been largely ignorred by 
ICANN).

So I have this lingering concern - why does ICANN have this monomaniacal
focus on the matters that have no real impact on the technical stability
of DNS and, at the same time, is almost completely blind to matters that
do have direct and significant impact on the technical stability of DNS?

To me the answer has been clear from the outset several years ago - that
ICANN is really a body that, despite claims to the contrary, is almost
entirely dedicated to the promulgation of economic and social policy,
largely for the benefit of large intellectual property owners (who are not
necessarily intellectual property creators) and DNS registry and registrar
businesses, and almost entirely divorced from technology

		--karl--

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Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 13:12:31 -0500
From: Sotiris Sotiropoulos <[email-masked]>
Subject: [ga] Intellectual Property and the WHOIS

I believe this latest report does not adequately reflect a
consensus among the Internet Community as a whole (users
and providers).  I believe this report is unfairly biased
in favour of Intellectual Property interests, and I
challenge the draftees to produce evidence of Internet
Community input (i.e. outside the 'insiders' who were
selected to draft it).  In short, there is not enough
public input to justify this report as anything resembling
an Internet Community consensus, unless all that is
indicated is a consensus reached by advocates of
Intellectual Property interests.

Sincerely,

Sotiris Sotiropoulos

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Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 18:05:55 -0800
From: Jeff Williams <[email-masked]>
Subject: [ga] Re: F Root Server to Be Mirrored

Jim and all,

  Excellent brief description here Jim.  Well done!  What is really significant
here that this is one step closer to Multi-Root structure, but is eliminating
the flexibility of Multi-Cast which is uniquely advantageous for such
structures, and far preferable to Any-Cast.  It should also be noted
that non-bind resolution will or has the ability to circumvent what
Paul is doing here.  Of course he already knows that.  >;)

Jim Fleming wrote:

> Is this the result of the ICANN stability and security work ?
>
> Has anyone looked at the difference in the way DNS works with UDP and TCP ?
>
> Is this using the IPv16 architecture with an "out-of-band" communication transport synching the servers behind the scenes ?
>
> http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/030210/102340_1.html
> TELEHOUSE America & Internet Software Consortium Develop DNS F-root Server in New York & Los Angeles
> Monday February 10, 10:30 am ET Deal Enables ISC to Mirror DNS Root Server in Additional U.S. Locations
>
> > http://www.icannwatch.org/article.pl?sid=03/02/10/2335210&mode=thread
> > F Root Server to Be Mirrored
> > This can only be good, can't it?
> > ==========
> >
> > http://isp-planet.com/technology/2002/dns_server.html
> > "BIND has been rated the number one security risk on the Internet by The SANS Institute."
> > ====
> >
> http://www.merit.edu/mail.archives/nanog/msg07385.html
> From: Joe Abley
>
> Each F-root node is carefully designed so that most failures which could stop a nameserver answering queries are reflected in the
> network, both within the F-root node, and within the F-root's service area. If a nameserver within a node is not available, the node
> will not send it queries; if all nameservers within a node are not available, the node will stop advertising 192.5.5.0/24 to its
> local community of peers, who will stop sending queries to the node.
>
> The potential for global instability in (and corresponding dampening of) 192.5.5.0/24 due to some oscillatory error condition in a
> particular node is limited by the fact that each non-Palo Alto node advertises 192.5.5.0/24 to peers only, and precautions are taken
> to limit the propagation of that prefix through peer networks. Only the Palo Alto node advertises 192.5.5.0/24 for global transit.
>
> If a local F-root node withdraws service, resolvers within its catchment area will see the BGP path to the global F-root node in
> Palo Alto exposed and selected. The change in relative RTTs will then cause resolvers (BIND-like resolvers, anyway) to reorder their
> ranking of how close the 13 root servers are, and referrals to the root from the catchment of the dead node will tend towards the
> new closest server, which may or may not be F.
>
> Hence, a failure of a restricted-anycast node restores the usual availability of root servers -- it effectively just removes the
> local optimisation that the anycast node was providing.
>
> Joe
> ===================================

Regards,
- --
Jeffrey A. Williams
Spokesman for INEGroup LLA. - (Over 129k members/stakeholders strong!)
================================================================
CEO/DIR. Internet Network Eng. SR. Eng. Network data security
Information Network Eng. Group. INEG. INC.
E-Mail [email-masked]
Contact Number: 214-244-4827 or 214-244-3801

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End of GA-DIGEST V1 #1591
*************************