I was under the impression that NANOG members were not interested in domain name issues. Since there appears to be a lot of discussion on the NANOG list about the .US domain, I am posting the following. Since I developed <http://comm.unety.net> which has over 23,000+ cities in the U.S. I feel that I have some knowledge about these matters. Some of the other things I have helped to develop during the past 20 years are listed below. I hope that people note that we do not charge people to be webmasters for Comm.unety.net. For some cities, people stand in line to get a shot at the job. It is a communety service. I plan this to be one of my last postings to NANOG. I am getting very tired of being accused of being a pirate and other things. I wish all of you the best of luck with your networking experiences and I hope that you all realize that your group is only as good as the least ethical members among you. Jim Fleming ========================================= ---------- From: Jim Fleming[SMTP:JimFleming@unety.net] Sent: Saturday, June 14, 1997 10:48 AM To: 'Russell Nelson'; us-domain@crynwr.com Cc: 'Multiple recipients of list DOMAIN-POLICY'; 'newdom@ar.com' Subject: The .US Domain and NSI On Friday, June 13, 1997 9:12 PM, Russell Nelson[SMTP:nelson@crynwr.com] wrote: @ I've turned the list back on again. There are 126 list members out of @ a possible 671. Most of the "big" delegates are here -- family-names, @ southern-domains, name-service, jp@research.troy.ny.us. Jon Postel is here. @ It is good to have a list to discuss just the .US domain although many of the issues have already been discussed on the various "newdom" lists for the past TWO+ years. It might save some people some time and energy to review that history. I am writing this to save people time. I hope that you find it useful. If you do not have time to read it, the bottom line is....follow the money... For the record, people might be interested to know that people have proposed to have SLDs under .US delegated to regional cooperative bodies that are modeled like the InterNIC. The NSF has over $20,000,000 in the 30% Internet Intellectual Infrastructure Fund [1] which could be used to help finance this type of effort. http://rs.internic.net/announcements/iif-update.html As an aside... I once proposed that all 50 states have a mini-InterNIC and that each state's .US SLD be delegated to that "StateNIC" for the good of the people in that state. I also tried to save all of the Cities in Illinois from the domain "grabbers" ,at no charge, but Jon Postel made sure that did not happen by making arbitrary rules such as people could not have more than 500 names or 50 in one state. The USC/ISI mail list archives have exchanges between Postel and his students documenting his actions to thwart my attempts to save Illinois cities last Fall. Returning to the InterNIC... When the InterNIC was formed, it was supposed to have three companies working together in a cooperative manner to provide the largely public service of domain name and IP allocation management. One of the companies (General Atomic) was supposed to be the NIC of NICs and was supposed to develop more InterNIC clones. This did not happen because the three companies did not cooperate. The three companies were not able to cooperate and the NSF was not able to manage them.[2] Because of the lack of cooperation, one of the companies (General Atomics) was defunded. This left NSI and AT&T as the remaining contractors. Since that time NSI has agressively positioned itself to be synonymous with the InterNIC when in fact the InterNIC is nothing more than a name for a cooperative arrangement managed by the U.S. Government. In my opinion, there are several reasons why the companies were not able to cooperate. One reason is that NSI really wanted the contract all to themselves from the beginning.[3] They say that in their proposal. Another reason is that Jon Postel was paid by NSI and that creates a conflict of interest which no one seems to want to discuss.[4] Some claim that NSI would have never obtained the NSF contract without Jon Postel's name. As a result, NSI is beholding to Jon Postel and Jon Postel controls the Root Name Servers that NSI operates. This conflict of interest impacts the .US Top Level Domain because as noted by Mark Kosters [5], the NSF PI of the InterNIC contract, NSI has been funding the operation of the .US Top Level Domain. All of these arrangements have lead to a situation where NSI and Jon Postel have worked closely together for several years to ensure that NSI has a monopoly over its operations and Jon Postel has his own Top Level Domain to play with. Other companies and people with research interests have been blocked from having new Top Level Domains added by Jon Postel in his elusive role as the IANA. [This is well documented in the newdom archives although some of the incriminating postings have mysteriously disappeared.] The history is clear, the money that has changed hands has been well documented and now the U.S. Government is beginning to investigate all of the issues surrounding Domain Name management and IP address allocations. In the next few months, various government agencies have announced they will be holding open forums to collect input on these subjects. More information on those activities can be found in the newdom archives at http://www.ar.com/lists. Again, I suggest that people study the past to help develop the best proposals for the future. I also suggest that everyone..."follow the money"... that tells the whole story... Jim Fleming Concerned Netizen Since 1975 Inventor - (NAPLPS, ANSI X3.110) Used to launch Prodigy Inventor - Virtual Personal Computer http://www.ddj.com/index/author/idx10133.htm Developer of The C+@ Programming Language http://www.ddj.com/ddj/1993/1993.10/index.htm Inventor - IPv8 (Coming in 1998...the Year of the C+@) ========= References =========== [1] @@@@ http://www.fnc.gov/FNCAC_Res.html#30fund Resolution - "30% Fund" May 9, 1997 "The NSF should work with NSI to create a mechanism to ensure that the "30% Fund" will be available for the future development of Internet Intellectual Infrastructure, such as the funding of efforts like ARIN and IANA." @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ [2] @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ December 1994 Midterm Evaluation <http://www.rs.internic.net/nsf/review/review-toc.html> "The InterNIC awards set the precedent of requiring significant self-coordination among a team of awardees, and requiring outreach to other Network Information Centers. The panel suggests that the NSF critically consider whether it is viable to expect significant self-coordination among a team of awardees in future awards. The panel also notes that the NSF's program management was not able to correct GA's problems early on despite excellent efforts by the NSF staff, primarily because the NSF staff were overextended by monitoring at least two major projects (the InterNIC and the NSFNET backbone) at once. The panel recommends that for future large scale efforts in the rapidly changing Internet environment, the NSF should form an ongoing advisory panel of outside experts or employ some external consultants to help manage such cooperative agreements, rather than waiting two years to call for a review." @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ [3] @@@@@@@@@@@@@ <http://rs.internic.net/nsf/nis/proposal-toc.html> "Network Solutions believes NSF's objectives will be met most effectively by the award of the bulk of the services to a single contractor." @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ [4] @@@@@@@@@@@@@ <http://rs.internic.net/nsf/nis/sectionM.html> "Network Solutions proposes Mr. Jon Postel as the IANA Manager and Chairman of the Advisory Panel for the NREN NIS Manager project. He will provide services as an employee of USC's Information Sciences Institute (ISI), subcontractor to Network Solutions." @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ [5] @@@@@@@@@@@@@ ---------- From: Mark Kosters[SMTP:markk@INTERNIC.NET] Sent: Friday, November 08, 1996 4:11 PM To: Multiple recipients of list DOMAIN-POLICY Subject: Re: US Top Level Domain The US domain was designed to allow for distributed management via a series of delegations within the US domain. The design was documented in rfc 1480 back in 1993. Aside from that, the US domain has not been a volunteer project. NSI (and NSF before fees went into effect) have allocated funding to ISI to help maintain/enhance the US domain registration activity. Regards, Mark

On Fri, 8 Nov 1996, Simson L. Garfinkel wrote:

...

US domain used to be a volunteer project. It became a burden for ISI. So they farmed it out. People who take up regions are allowed to charge.

Are you sure about that? Do you know if anybody does?

-- Mark Kosters markk@internic.net +1 703 742 4795 Principal Investigator InterNIC Registration Services PGP Key fingerprint = 1A 2A 92 F8 8E D3 47 F9 15 65 80 87 68 13 F6 48 @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@