Re: get technical, please? , Re: Trees have one root

On 7/30/02, Peter Deutsch wrote:

> g'day Vint,
>
> "vinton g. cerf" wrote:
> > ed, how would you suggest to resolve an email address if
it returns ambiguous 
> results?
>
> Maybe it's because I've spent part of the last week poking
> around with synchronous serial protocols (I2C, anyone?) but
> I think I may have a useful analogy here.
>
> You can divide serial communication protocols into two
> classes, those which included embedded clocking and those
> which rely on external clocking. One technique isn't
> naturally superior to the other, and in fact there are
> times you want to use one or the other, depending upon
> design goals, circumstances, etc.
>
> We can think of the DNS service as commonly used today as
> having "embedded clocking", in that the knowledge of where
> to go to resolve a query is assumed as part of the query.
> This is less flexible than having this knowledge outside
> the query but it's simpler and does lead to a simpler
> system. It also ties everyone together in ways that,
> because of admittedly non-technical decisions made outside
> the scope of this list, the resulting service is running
> up against constraints a lot earlier than might be
> expected absent such decisions. Sadly, now that
> "steampowered.com" is gone I can wail all I want, but I'm
> not getting it as long as we all use the same resolvers
> (ie. the same "embedded clock"). This is the only way to
> guarantee universality of response.
A clock, whether embedded or external, is only useful if it
is used by both the sender and all the recepients. Given the
goal of having a single clock, there are indeed many
different ways to achieve the same result.

You cannot, however, have two of the devices on an I2C bus
decide that the clock the rest of the bus is using is
defective, and just decide to use a better clock on their
own.


Additionally, I think it is also important to recognize that
domain names are now an integral part of trademarks and have
meaning far beyond translating a name to an IP address.

Suppose the IETF were to somehow get the crazy idea to
radically change the entire domain registration system, and
as a result Disney no longer owned "disney.com"?

Does anyone really think the courts would back the IETF?