On Fri, Mar 21, 1997 at 11:57:43AM -0800, Vadim Antonov wrote:

I do not think the domain issue is beyond the scope of NANOG. In fact, w/o working DNS the value of services provided by N.A.N.Operators is zero. In other words, the domain insanity reached the level where it starts to impact the business of ISPs materially.

In other words, it is in the interest of ISPs to step in and inject some sanity into how that vital part of infrastructure is being run.

ISPs is the only party in the debate which actually has resources and enough business sense to make it a workable setup. I strongly suspect that "expert groups" and "engineering task forces" have already demonstrated their unability to fix the problem.

Now, to me it looks like CIDR movie rerun.

--vadim

Yep. The problem is, who are the "ISPs" involved in this whole thing? A half-dozen national megacorporations? No. The 2,000+ ISPs in the US who actually connect customers to the Internet? Yes. What do THEY want? Choice, quality of service, and happy customers. One of *OUR* domains (MCS.COM) was wrongly terminated the other day. They still claim we haven't paid. We claim we have, and have cancelled checks to prove it. We dispute who has paid for what period of time. Fine and well. Except for one problem. They never invoiced us. They have turned it back on after much shouting from our accounting department, pending us receiving something which commercially passes as an invoice so that a real investigation of who has paid for what can be figured out. How do you dispute a bill you never received? You don't. How do you possibly validate using *EMAIL* for invoices without prior consent (ie: by default), as NSI does? The obvious reason for this is avoiding the cost of running it through the postage meter at 32 cents a crack, but heh, if I have to do that to invoice my customers in a legitimate format, why not NSI? Email, especially email without a digital signature affixed, is too easily spoofed to be commercially acceptable for this kind of thing. I don't pay off email bills, because there is no documentation and no paper trail. If audited, guess what -- I have to produce that paper. Now let's look at the alternatives to the current mess: 1) IAHC - Nice concept, but troublesome in many areas. Jurisdictional, regulatory, due process, all kinds of problems. Unknown costs at the CORE level, unknown budgets, single-model. The worst problem is that if it sucks we can't "go around" it as the Internet has always done. Why? Because it is claimed to be the only model which will exist AND THERE ARE PEOPLE TRYING TO MAKE IT THAT WAY BY FORCE THROUGH TREATY PROCEEDINGS. Further, I don't believe they CAN force NSI to play, or that NSI will voluntarily -- and believe that NSI's recent press release backs up that view -- but that's the claim. Costs? $20,000 to play in the lottery, plus $500,000 in hard assets or a credit line for same. This is a "big business" approach to the problem, and directly opposite how the net has been built from the ground up. 2) eDNS - Open. Consensual. Multi-business-model based. Build it and they will come (ie: how the net got where it is today). Operates on the principle that the policy of the root is to prevent market concentration (ie: monopoly) and collisions between TLDs, and nothing more. The IAHC model and their TLDs (other than WEB and ARTS, which someone claimed first) are welcome. The NSI model is welcome. Alternic is welcome. Any other model, including a Freenet who wants to run a registry, is welcome. Lots of choices for jurisdiction under which registrants can select from. Lots of business models to choose from. Lots of different prices to be charged, and different levels of service assurance available for the fees assessed. Due process as allowed or mandated by the laws governing the registry in question. Fixed (zero) costs at the root, fixed (zero) budgets. $0 to play; based on rough consensus, working code, and a published policy for the world to view and evaluate *on its own*. Which model SHOULD win? If you pick or support the IAHC model, then you had better be right -- because the alternative is that the world collapses. If you pick the eDNS model, you don't have to be right -- in fact, you don't have to take a position on the "right" model. eDNS supports all business models, and believes that the "right" ones will survive *on their own* without coercion being applied. I think the choices are obvious, and the people who support the "fixed model" rather transparent with their motivations. But of course, that's just my opinion. I've said my peace on this. Anyone on the "other side" who feels compelled to get in the last word is welcome to do so. Those who want more information can get it through the web page below. -- -- Karl Denninger (karl@MCS.Net)| eDNS - The free-market solution http://www.edns.net/ | hostmaster@edns.net