things don't stay in the cache forever, and there are various
reasons why cache entries can go away before the TTL has expired.
To the degree that this is true (which it is), it is also true for the
existing ~250 TLDs.
yes.
no. a few hundred million hosts using (on average) two dozen popular TLDs
will generate twice the load on the roots as the same number of hosts using
(on average) a dozen popular TLDs.
That only holds true if the number of queries also doubles.
no, all that is necessary is that there be a single query for each
of the "popular" TLDs at each resolver for every time the cached NS
record for that TLD at that resolver goes away. (that's what I mean
by "popular"). so an increase in TLDs can cause the load on the root
servers to increase drastically without the number of end-system
queries increasing at all - all that is needed is for those queries
to exhibit less locality of reference than before.
read the statement again. *someone* has to decide whch TLDs are "handed out
".
we can argue about the criteria that should be used to influence such
decisions, but there are still decisions that have to be made.
There are policy decisions which have to be made which control how the
process goes, certainly. But there is absolutely no reason that ICANN
needs to decide on which specific TLDs are created.
*somebody* has to do it, and that *somebody* is inherently going
to be under a lot of pressure from conflicting and often powerful
interests - and hence that *somebody* is going to be controversial -
whether or not that *somebody* is ICANN.
Keith