U.S. Won't Concede Control of Internet Root Servers

AP ^ | 6/30/2005 | Anick Jesdanun

[Bogey78O]

Bingo.

[CatoRenasci]

I was in the computer center at UC Santa Barbara in 1969 when the first turned the ARPANET on. Al Gore was nowhere to be seen.

[Captain Rhino]

Sort of like the United Nations Human Rights Commission with Libya, Iran, and China as voting members??

[chilepepper]

the US keeping control over the internet root servers?

gosh, what an unjimmuh thing to do...

[em2vn]

So was giving up the Panama Canal and declaring a one China policy. Never underestimate the liberals in this country.

[Beckwith]

Just be very, very grateful that Jimmah Carter is not president. He'd surrender the Internet in a heartbeat, just like he did the Canal.

[hiredhand]

This is different...a LOT different. Mark my words, if the root DNS servers leave the control of the U.S., folks are going to split off and create their own roots. It's just that hard to do.

As long as the WOT is going on though, and as long as the badguys are using the "net" to exchange info, it would be a truly dumb thing to hand root DNS control over to ANYBODY.

[jpl]

Before too long, Al Qaeda would be monitoring all of our communication traffic instead of the other way around.

Why don't we just turn over control of all of our military satellites and the keys to the nuclear stockpile while we're at it.

[DTogo]

www.freerepublic.un

;^)

[COBOL2Java]

Thank God we've got a businessman in the White House and not a peanut farmer or a grifter.

[South40]

I don't disagree that relenquishing control would be a bad thing. I just disagree that it won't ever happen.

Carter gave up control of the canal. Any libRAT president we have in the future might relenquish control of the root servers.

[COBOL2Java]

Just be very, very grateful that Jimmah Carter is not president. He'd surrender the Internet in a heartbeat, just like he did the Canal.

LOL! Brilliant minds think alike! Ol' Jimmah is the very idiot who came to mind when I read this article.

[hiredhand]

YES you can. I'm not going to argue it here. I'm sure that others who have managed enterprise DNS setups will back me up.

If you control DNS, then you control the MX mechanism for e-mail. You also control the mappings for every webserver on this planet, including those which host e-mail.

Name to address mapping is only ONE type of RR (resource record) provided by DNS.

But just so you know, their are also -

PTR RRs - (pointer) Address back to name.
CNAME - (cononical name) - aliases.
NS - (nameserver) - nameserver RRs.
SOA - (start of authority).
RP - (responsible person).

There are other RRs as well...I just don't use them often enough to list them off here.

I've managed some VERY large DNS in the past, and have a lot of experience in subverting it as a former USAF Info Warfare tech.

[commonasdirt]

"the US giving up control of the Panama Canal, and we know how that ended."

Thanks for the reminder. Anytime the rest of the world begins yipping and yapping about cooperation from the US we all need to be reminded of the horror years of the Carter administration.....or as I like to remember them....the "no balls" era.

[hiredhand]

I can assure you. If it were to ever happen, I would configure my own roots, and only to point to the outside world roots on demand.

I hear ya. Never say "Never" :-)

[bobdsmith]

I think it is really important to realise that no actual data traffic is passing through these root servers. If mr jihad wants to send an email to his friend in bacalaca street it won't pass through the root servers.

Also some of the root servers are already based abroad: http://www.root-servers.org/

Basically this issue is just over-hyped. Control of the root servers is an issue of administration rather than strategic. I see no real problem with most of them remaining under US control. Works so why fix it?

[South40]

Speaking of the Carter Administration...

Have you ever seen this 1980 Ted Kennedy presidential campaign brochure? Kennedy couldn't get the nomination even though he pointed out, and quite well I might add, Carter's profound failures as president.

[Colorado Doug]

Poor Kofi and his UN buddies just can't seem to get their hands on a new source of revenue since the Oil For Food deal dried up. They really should have saved some of their money

[bobdsmith]

"YES you can."

You said "imagine being able to send e-mail destined for whitehouse.gov anywhere you wanted. Then, keep a copy and forward it on to it's intended destination"

Yes my mistake you are correct. I misread it as a claim that the root server would keep the copy, as if the email was passing through the root server. Silly me.

[Allosaurs_r_us]

CNAME - (cononical name) - aliases

 

You're exactly tight. This entry is all you need to know about to suggest they can be manipulated. We control internet traffic and suffix info. To relinquish this would be like Bill Clintoon giving up missile tech to China!

 

We sure happy about that aren't we?