This is currently a mostly capex-less exercise. I agree, the load is on operations, and likely at ICANN, VeriSign, and the DoC.
We need way more detail than we have, but I hope all parties and the AC's move in a stewardship -and- commerce friendly direction with this. Even if it causes an evolution in the root -- which I believe it will.
Best,
Marty
"Nothing like having a front row seat on the Internet".
---Mary Reindeau
this may actually be the straw that triggers a serious redesign of the
Internet's lookup system(s)... if not this, then IPv6 has a good chance.
Incremental changes are good - are stable (usually), and often can be
compartmentalized. But sometimes - revolutionary changes are needed.
and if they have the same attributes (stable & compartmentable) - then
all the better. the real issues w/ new TLDs is that they are being rolled out
at the same time as IDN tlds.... the number of applications and endsystems
that will need to be rebuilt, tested, debugged, shipped, and documented is
nearly unimmaginable. your comment wrt operations is, dare I say, understated?
the opex for this is huge. ICANN reaps the profits and the ISPs customers
pay. (*) Friend Bush alluded to this earlier.
It si my fond hope that DNS validation API's are built/tested soon, so that
end systems have one sea change and not three within the next 24 months.
Oh yeah... and make sure you get IPv6 capability in there too.
This will not be your fathers Internet.
--bill