I received the following from Jon Postel. Posted with his permission.

Eric:

Thanks for asking.

The USDNS organization is esentially a broker for domain names in the US (and maybe other) domains.

The idea seems to be that if a customer wants a domain name and does not know how to get it he can go to the broker and ask for what he wants. The broker then does the work by contacting the appropriate domain manager and getting the name registered and paying any fees due to the domain manager. The broker adds on his own fee and bills the customer.

There seem to be several such services in operation.

Some people seem to be glad to find such helpful services, other people seem to think that since these services charge you for something you could do directly yourself for less there is something wrong about their existance.

In the world there are many such services, we all make tradeoffs every day between doing something ourselves vs using a service to do it for us. We all trade money vs time and/or knowledge and/or skill.

The US Domain Administration does not make any recommendations positive or negative about such services.

--jon.

-- Eric Kozowski VP Internet Services eric@structured.net Structured Network Systems, Inc. (800)390-5945 Support A Verio Affiliate (800)881-0962 Sales/Info http://www.structured.net/ PGP Key fingerprint = 0A E4 91 B8 BD CB 3E 95 42 12 04 4E 14 DF 86 76 'They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.' -- Benjamin Franklin 1759