At 03:13 PM 8/6/2002 -0500, Stephen Sprunk wrote:
Perhaps having multiple roots *with identical information* would be stable and
workable, but that requirement inherently negates the motivation for having
multiple roots.
from that perspective, we have multiple roots now - 13 of them - and call
it a "single root". The reason we can call it that is that they are
indistinguishable from one another from the perspective of the information
they deliver - ask any of them for example.com and they will invariably
point you to a .com server, and if you ask a .com server, it will point you
to the appropriate prefix for that name.
As you say, what is being asked for is multiple roots with different and
uncoordinated information. What this requires, of course, is for the end
system to know all the roots it might need to ask, and have a magic decoder
ring that tells it which root to ask about which name. This is fine if the
TLD itself tells you which root to ask, but if someone adds a root to the
net that is not generally known, then most end systems trying to translate
the name will generally be unable to do so. I, personally, find that kind
of service pointless - why use a name which nobody can translate into an
address?