dot-root is a test-bed for the Internet.

Its role is to provide a real-life technical and societal infrastructure for the development, deployment, operational evaluation and concerted management of projects aiming at equal security, stability, innovation capacity, national digital sovereignty, as well as equal user access availability, quality and relative cost, throughout the Internet network system.

The turn-key test environment it wants to propose to project development teams is:

• available: everything is already built-in and in operations, at no other cost other than plugging one or two machines, presenting a project of common interest and sharing into its mailing lists
• comprehensive: multiple roots server systems, experimental TLDs, test users, monitors, common services, community support and press relations, contributors, etc.
• visible: established relational links, awareness of previous projects, attention by the membership and the international community, parallel notoriety of other projects.

dot-root complies with ICANN/ICP-3 as :

• a non-profit voluntary project by the global internet community
• a test environment, where "everything may stop and never resume"
• a governance experiment where administration and project selection are freely concerted by the participating test-root-server managers and their root-system administrators ("concertance")

It is built as a set of multiple parallel, asynchronous, independent and complete root-server systems, monitoring each other for inconsistency alarms. These systems will support:

• only the legacy namespaces only, for referencing tests and emergency back-up of the real Internet,
• or also additional test ULDs (Upper Level Domains) which are test namespaces (TLD) aliased as standard legacy sub-namespaces (SLD). Such ULDs are to support joint technical and educational R&D projects, provide test traffic by real users, be available for societal experiments and to test the political aspects of the namespace concerted governance.

All the other test-root-system administrators must accept new participating test root-systems. Members of root-server systems accept new test root-servers as per their own charter. Only root-system administrators may be namespace referents to the consortium: as such, they are responsible for their good management and their registrants' non-commercial registrations.

The dot-root administrator conference is supported by a Secretariat funded by contributions, studies, services and consulting. The dot-root steering committee promotes the capacity of dot-root to support common interest experiments. Independent monitors and services can be supported on a permanent or ad hoc basis. A Network Alert System is foreseen for 2003. The dot-root system is available to Governments and ccTLD root sever back-up in case of emergency.

The dot-root advisory committee assists:

• the members : in selecting and supporting projects proposed by the Internet community,
• the project managers : by discussing on their projects and their report to the relevant Internet and international task forces and bodies.

To join the dot-root consortium as a root administrator, root-server manager, contributor or member of its general assembly mailing list, to assist as independent monitor or to obtain more information on the dot-root project, please consult http://dot-root.com.