-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- 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. As domains in the new TLDs are obviously only useful if people can reach them, new.net is offering a variety of ways to be able to resolve them. Anyone in control of a recursive nameserver can: - - Slave a root zone with the new TLDs appended. - - Add stubs for the new TLDs pointing at udns[12].newdotnet.net. (I'm pleased with the UltraDNS infrastructure, which is serving similarly here to the gtld-servers.net but for new.net's TLDs. For those using the stub-zone hack, these are the only servers they ever see.) - - Replace the root cache with one pointing to ns[123].newdotnet.net, which will delegate as appropriate to the various TLD servers. (There are obviously too few of these available with not enough diversity, but more will be added soon.) The "launch partners" are listed as Earthlink, Excite@Home, NetZero. These shortly will be using one of the above to allow their users to reach the new TLDs. Given that the whole goal is for the domains to be resolvable, expect to see more. But these options aren't available to the average end user. Rather than setting up a few centralized recursive nameservers and trying to get every desktop in the world to send their traffic to them, new.net has elected to also make the domains reachable with ".new.net" appended. This allows for proper local caching and search-path related tricks. For all desktop users, the option is available to just add new.net to the search path. One of the functions of the Windows client offered on the site is a resolver plugin that appends ".new.net" on to some queries. It tries to cut down on the number of failed DNS requests that just would be generated by just adding new.net to the search path. It will also act as a sub-proxy for proxy users, appending ".new.net" on to some HTTP proxy requests. I'm not sure whats going on with a patent application on this. 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'm pretty sure that I didn't want it to come to this, and I'm not entirely convinced that anyone should be doing it. But personal reservations aside, its happening. And I intend to see that its done as well as possible. Aaron Hopkins Systems Engineer, idealab! Acting VP of Engineering, new.net -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.4 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iQCVAwUBOqXvPEfJWHAEvsjBAQFgAQQAmtREC7ZCYLVrA2biCzriM1z07Jrk7oAc fG9znSGC7gtHrcsad2N7SR+wFsWP2v8I546zYMvpcfHDClRFyS11tohi85W/CfEQ 9kaWfe01Jzqri37v+jHfAyX7k7OrSz+9wRJoh72rTItMWgaLECA1wync//EJ7EYc o+zS2KTe2P4= =kJXu -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----