In addition to the Internet's main DNS root (currently consisting of 13 nominal root nameservers working in agreement with ICANN), several organizations operate alternate DNS roots (often referred to as alt roots). Each alternate root has its own set of root nameservers and its own set of top-level domains.
The BIZ TLD created by Pacific Root was in operation before ICANN proposed running BIZ, and at least one of the alternate root servers resolves BIZ to Pacific Root's. There are BIZ domain names that exist in different roots and point to different IP addresses. The possibility of such conflicts, and their potential for destabilizing the Internet, is the main source of controversy surrounding alt roots.
Alt roots can in general be divided into two groups; those run for idealist or ideological reasons, and those run as profit-making enterprises.
Whilst technically trivial to set up, actually running a reliable root server network in the long run is a serious undertaking, requiring multiple servers to be kept running 24/7 in geographically diverse locations. During the dot-com boom, some alt-root providers believed that there were substantial profits to be made from providing alternative top-level domains. Only a small proportion of ISPs actually use any of the zones served by alt-root operators, generally sticking to the ICANN-specified root servers. This in turn led to the commercial failure of several alternate DNS root providers.
In addition to the Internet's main DNSroot (currently consisting of 13 root nameservers working in agreement with ICANN), several organizations operate alternateDNSroots (often referred to as alt roots).
Each alternateroot has its own root nameservers and its own set of top-level domains.
The ORSC root zone is too large to be fully quoted here.
Yet other alternateroots have been established by certain individuals to protest the policies developed by the broader community processes for management of the authoritative root, or to express their disinterest in participating in those processes.
Alternateroots inherently endanger DNS stability – that is, they create the real risk of name resolvers being unable to determine to which numeric address a given name should point.
For example, alternateroots are commonly operated by large organizations within their private networks without harmful effects, since care is taken to prevent the flow of the alternate resource records onto the public Internet.
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