Despite the stated technical merits of a single root, I think one needs to reflect on the implications that a few of the world's largest ISPs appear to have made a business decision to use a superset of the ICANN/US Department of Commerce's root zone. It's claimed that the US had about 100 million Internet users in December 2000. According to New.net's numbers (which needs to be confirmed), about 16% of those can now use their alternative root. If this percentage continues to grow, ICANN's ability to control what goes into the DNS would seem to be constrained. Robert -- Robert Shaw <robert.shaw@itu.int> ITU Internet Strategy and Policy Advisor International Telecommunication Union <http://www.itu.int> Place des Nations, 1211 Geneva, Switzerland