CNAME and other data -vs- could not find NS and/or SOA records

[John Manly]

> Why not just put a foo.com CNAME record (and any records you want to =
put=20
> *under* foo.com) into the .com zone? From a protocol standpoint, =
that's=20
> exactly the way to handle it. It's just that the TLD operators don't=20
> currently allow us ordinary folks to put such records in the zones. =
It's=20
> basically an administrative/political issue, then, *not* a technical=20
> one. The protocol allows you to do what you want, but the TLD =
operators=20
> forbid it. Life is tough. Perhaps you should petition to start your =
own TLD.

This is an interesting point in this discussion: is there a technical =
reason
why TLDs don't allow this, or is it just laziness in that they are set =
up
to do only SOA and NS records and that's worked fine for ages so why =
bother?

And if one TLD were willing to support this kind of thing (which I =
imagine could
make them rather popular), could that TLD just do so all on its own, or =
would it
somehow have to coordinate with all the others, or with all the name =
registrars,
or with some other group?

While we're on the subject, can someone supply a brief overview of the =
relationship
between TLDs and Registrars?  Who are the TLDs, anyway?  I assume not =
very Registrar
is a TLD (there can only be one zone file for the .COM domain, for =
example, right?),
so who are the TLDs, and how do the Registrars typically feed data to =
them?

What I'm getting at here, of course, is if someone wanted to petition =
for a TLD to
change their policy to permit CNAMEs instead of NS and SOA records =
(which, it seems
to me, someone else on this list suggested not long ago, but it wasn't =
apparent to
me then exactly what they were talking about) who exactly would need to =
be convinced,
and how widespread would the change have to be?

-- John W. Manly  <jwmanly at amherst.edu>
   Systems and Networking, Amherst College