On Wed, Mar 07, 2001 at 12:20:09AM -0800, Aaron Hopkins wrote:
So the short answer minus the marketing-speak is that new.net is offering domains in new TLDs without having them in *.root-servers.net. The idea isn't new; people have been doing this for years with limited success. [...] The "launch partners" are listed as Earthlink, Excite@Home, NetZero.
NetZero is an idealab! Capital Partner, so I'm not terribly surprised there. EarthLink and Excite@Home are big and well-respected names, and surely do carry _some_ weight as to setting precedents. But these organizations do not the internet make, and the success of new.net's new TLD's is dependent upon widespread adaptation. What incentive -- operational, financial, and otherwise -- is there for other providers to follow suit? What differentiates new.net from other people who might want to utilize similar tactics for TLD's of their own? And what happens when there's TLD overlap between you and other alternate registrars? Clearly some sort of authority structure, be it ICANN or something idealab!-created to "compete" with ICANN, is needed. I'm sure Dr. Joe Baptista and Roeland Meyer would like it if the global Internet could resolve .god domains, and certainly Jim Phlemming has a TLD up his sleeves to be used in conjunction with IPv8 rollout... ;)
This is obviously less clean than just having ICANN list new TLDs. But given the ongoing frustration with ICANN, there is significant interest in a different approach, and new.net is taking one.
I agree, ICANN (or is ICan't more appropriate?) is a very broken organization, and I wholeheartedly appreciate the efforts made by you and others to circumvent them through innovation such as this. Still, they're the folks most(?) Internet operators recognize as being in charge, and until that changes, I question the usefulness of alternate root servers. -adam