I'm pretty confident that DNS fragmentation is going to happen.
others do not share your confidence. yes, there are self-proclaimed
alternate roots. no, they do not have significant buy-in.
Please have a look at:
http://siliconvalley.internet.com/news/article/0,2198,3531_944171,00.html
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-8236459.html?tag=ch_mh
http://www.intern.de/news/2403.html
Even if the numbers are exaggerated by an order of magnitude, they
start to become significant.
The way New.net changes network hosts to use their namespace is quite
remarkable, too.
ISP buy-in is one thing; user buy-in is quite another. It will be
interesting to see whether purchasers of these names are disappointed
that they cannot be used throughout the Internet in email addresses
and URLs.
Keith