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Paul Vixie to Leave BIND

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the stepping-down-and-out dept.

strabo writes "Paul Vixie made it known at LISA '99 in Seattle on Wednesday that he'll be stepping down as the maintainer and head architect of BIND, which he has been doing for the past 10 years. Many thanks to Paul for his hard work and dedication! "

1 of 44 comments (clear)

  1. Re:why slam AlterNIC? by Frater+219 · · Score: 5

    Vixie is of the well-considered opinion that the DNS tree can only have one root. DNS is designed around the idea that each zone, including the top-level zone, can only have a single authority record. This means that delegation can emanate only from one place, namely the top-level SOA (Start Of Authority) record.

    Whoever controls the top-level SOA controls the delegation for the top-level domains (com, edu, de, jp, etc.) and hence the rest of the system. This was true when InterNIC was run not-for-profit, and remains true now that InterNIC is run for profit: it is not an artifact of the management of the DNS directory, but rather of its design.

    It would be possible to create a new name-service system which permitted multiple roots, search engines or Hotline-style "trackers", a directed-graph model instead of a tree model, &c. However, this would not be DNS, and these features should not be slapped onto the side of DNS. They would require a new architecture.

    If you want it, please feel free to design it. Distribute your resolver libraries far and wide. However, don't commit the errors of AlterNIC, such as committing computer crimes (forgery of DNS entries) in order to popularize your system.