Re: Incompetance abounds at the InterNIC
Once again, we have a tempest in a teapot. And once again this "tempest" is just a means of obscuring the real problem. Speculators aren't the problem. They are just a scapegoat. I'm probably going about this the wrong way by arguing the details of speculation, instead of getting people to focus on the real problems of performance and management. But Internic isn't very forthcoming in how they manage their systems. Even so, I think I could run an automated database service for very little cost per transaction. On the order of hundreths of a cent per transaction. Charging $35 means means that one can make many, many thousands of non-revenue transactions per revenue generating transaction. So I'll make the claim that if Internic can't do it for a comparable cost, that isn't justification for restrictions on the user community. You all remember when Internic was formed, and registrations were going to cost money, that many people thought $50.00 a year was outrageously high, right? At 01:55 PM 1/20/1999 -0700, Pete Kruckenberg wrote:
There is a key difference, and that is that stock speculators pay for the right to speculate, so the system can afford to scale to meet the increased volume.
Actually, quite a few stock speculators don't pay for the privilege. Many speculators are stock brokers or floor traders who speculate cost free (other than the cost of the stocks they buy). And you should note that now that the stock exchanges are now nearly fully automated (though much less so than Internic), discount brokerages now charge less than Internic. Trading never stops now. Again, I think a first class, high availability, high security database service can be operated without significant per transaction costs. Indeed, it is a damning indictment of Internic that stock brokerages charge less, yet provide more secure, and more highly available computer services. You also assume that domain speculators are the only ones who register more domains than they pay for. They aren't. I'll bet many here have registered domains that they later didn't want and didn't pay for. Further, speculators ultimately pay for the domains they sell. What you are really complaining about is that they register some domains they don't pay for. The only reason you are complaining about that is because someone pinned the blame for Internic problems on speculators. The claim that "speculators don't pay" doesn't stand up. Neither does the claim that speculators cause Internic problems. They don't. I think Internic can afford to scale with the volume regardless of speculation. Internic is a nearly fully automated process which charges 35.00 for a completed registration. I am going to go out on a limb that a single database transaction costs very nearly nothing. So without doing the math for a single registration, I think Internic *afford* a large number of non-completed transactions for each completed transaction. Speculators that actively try to sell their domains quite likely cause more domains to be registered, and so they increase the Internic sales revenue. I haven't seen any evidence that the costs of their non-completed transactions are more than cost of their completed transactions. It costs them much more to fill out the registration template and scan the news than it does for Internic to (automatically) process the registration. If they don't sell more than their time is worth, they won't be able to afford to keep doing it. So it doesn't make any sense that they register to many hundreds of thousands of domains per successful registration. And if they generate a net-gain for Internic, thats a good thing. The only speculators that might be able to register thousands of domains with little effort are the ones who register on-hold domains. But they are doing a favor for Internic, because they are collecting fees. More importantly, they will ultimately encourage people to make their payments on time. Thats a good thing for Internic. Quite possibly, Internic can improve its efficiency with regard to domain expirations and re-registrations. But that doesn't mean that one should go though contortions to stop speculators. I certainly don't want to give up the current system that allows one to register domains with delayed or canceled payment and immediate duplicate notification. --Dean ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Plain Aviation, Inc dean@av8.com LAN/WAN/UNIX/NT/TCPIP http://www.av8.com ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
At 01:55 PM 1/20/1999 -0700, Pete Kruckenberg wrote:
There is a key difference, and that is that stock speculators pay for the right to speculate, so the system can afford to scale to meet the increased volume.
Actually, quite a few stock speculators don't pay for the privilege. Many speculators are stock brokers or floor traders who speculate cost free (other than the cost of the stocks they buy). And you should note that now that the stock exchanges are now nearly fully automated (though much less so than Internic), discount brokerages now charge less than Internic. Trading never stops now. Again, I think a first class, high availability, high security database service can be operated without significant per transaction costs.
This is a very bad example - (1) On the floor there are costs associated with clearing of the trade (ticket). The cost of the ticket depends on the number of shares that changed hands. For example, if the transactions are cleared by a ML Professional Clearing services, the cost I believe is about $0.01 per share. The second portion of the cost depends on what system someone used to execute a trade - for example, SuperDOT matching costs $n. Attain is $0.005 per share. Bloomberg is $0.005 per share with $1.50 minimum. SelectNet is additional $1 (2) Stock exchanges are *NOT* automated more than InterNIC. Some NASDAQ books are automated more than others. As NASDAQ unlike NYSE can be traded everywhere, in and out of the books, MMs it is not automated. The closes way of how the NIC would have looked had it been working like NASDAQ, would have looked like this: Two guys sit on the bar at 2am EST and one offers the other to register Microsoft.com ( yes, existing domain ) for $40 (number has no relevance to any price for buying the domain ). They cross the deal, and report the transaction to the NIC by 8am. NIC adjusts the database to reflect the transaction. Now you have two different, perfectly valid, domains with identical name. Would you like to have a system such as this? NYSE is not automated even with a SuperDOT as specialist decides how the orders are matched. These costs are paid by the crowd all the time.
Indeed, it is a damning indictment of Internic that stock brokerages charge less, yet provide more secure, and more highly available computer services.
This is also completely incorrect. Those who charge flat comissions, or charge nothing, get paid a lot of money for the order flow where they would always send your order to a specific MM even if that is not the best bid/ask. This is just to say please do not wish on us any portion of the internet to work the way any of the exchanges currently work. Alex
thank you all for making clear by your messages that the subject line had a serious spelling error. it should be incompetance abounds on the internet randy
On Thu, 21 Jan 1999, Dean Anderson wrote:
Once again, we have a tempest in a teapot. And once again this "tempest" is just a means of obscuring the real problem. Speculators aren't the problem. They are just a scapegoat.
I'm probably going about this the wrong way by arguing the details of speculation, instead of getting people to focus on the real problems of performance and management.
Well, I wouldn't exactly characterize speculators as "scapegoats" however your point is a valid one.
But Internic isn't very forthcoming in how they manage their systems. Even so, I think I could run an automated database service for very little cost per transaction. On the order of hundreths of a cent per transaction.
You and half a million other people claim to be able to do this. Running code please?
You also assume that domain speculators are the only ones who register more domains than they pay for. They aren't.
Yes, they are.
I'll bet many here have registered domains that they later didn't want and didn't pay for.
So? That doesn't prove that non-speculators do this more often than speculators. Why don't you check with NSI on this?
Further, speculators ultimately pay for the domains they sell.
No, the purchaser pays for the domains they sell. The speculator often does not.
What you are really complaining about is that they register some domains they don't pay for. The only reason you are complaining about that is because someone pinned the blame for Internic problems on speculators.
I would hardly say that is the only reason.
The claim that "speculators don't pay" doesn't stand up.
It stand up quite well. Having worked for a registrar that employed both models (post-pay and pre-pay) I can state unequivocally that our empirical data showed that because of speculation a post-pay model was undesireable as the speculators on the system at the time were not paying for the vast majority of domains they registered.
Neither does the claim that speculators cause Internic problems. They don't.
Demostratively false, that is why we are having this discussion. The problems at NSI weren't caused from normal load that they expect. If you want to argue that they have a shoddy, underpowered infrastructure, I would tend to agree with you.
I think Internic can afford to scale with the volume regardless of speculation. Internic is a nearly fully automated process which charges
Speculators that actively try to sell their domains quite likely cause more domains to be registered, and so they increase the Internic sales revenue. I haven't seen any evidence that the costs of their non-completed transactions are more than cost of their completed transactions.
Think about what you are saying. The cost of a completed transaction is absored by the fees paid for that transaction. The cost of a non-completed transaction is paid for by the fees *everyone else* pays for *their* transactions. Because you haven't seen the evidence does not mean it does not exist. There is quite a bit of expense associated with mailing paper invoices for example.
The only speculators that might be able to register thousands of domains with little effort are the ones who register on-hold domains. But they are doing a favor for Internic, because they are collecting fees.
Where do you get this wild idea? The only way this occurs is if the domain is sold which occurs in the minority of cases, and then it is usually the end purchaser, not the speculator that is paying for the domain. The speculator serves no useful purpose in the transaction chain for anyone involved save themselves. /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ Coming to the ISPF-II? The Forum for ISPs by ISPs http://www.ispf.com (tinc) \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
Dean Anderson wrote:
You also assume that domain speculators are the only ones who register more domains than they pay for. They aren't. I'll bet many here have registered domains that they later didn't want and didn't pay for.
I'll go along with you on that because I've seen some people do that. But I don't. The only time I didn't pay for a domain was one that came up for it's renewal 2 years later because I decided I no longer wanted to do what I had planned for it.
Further, speculators ultimately pay for the domains they sell. What you are really complaining about is that they register some domains they don't pay for. The only reason you are complaining about that is because someone pinned the blame for Internic problems on speculators.
I believe that "domains they don't pay for" greatly exceeds "domains they sell".
The claim that "speculators don't pay" doesn't stand up.
Neither does the claim that speculators cause Internic problems. They don't.
Since many speculators actually do not pay, the claim can stand up very well. As to whether this causes problems for InterNIC, I do not know. But I have seen tons of names offered that are not paid for. This was taking place even as early as the last time I was able to download the whole zone data.
I think Internic can afford to scale with the volume regardless of speculation. Internic is a nearly fully automated process which charges 35.00 for a completed registration. I am going to go out on a limb that a single database transaction costs very nearly nothing. So without doing the math for a single registration, I think Internic *afford* a large number of non-completed transactions for each completed transaction.
I really won't argue with this in terms of what "should be" with respect to the ideal way to do it. What InterNIC has in place today is still based on the setup originally established for a few thousand domains. A better system _can_ be done, most certainly. And maybe that is on its way now. But if the crunch of templates is blocking _my_ couple of templates from getting processed in under a week, then I really do want them to apply some temporary fix now to _this_ system so that do have the breathing room to put a better system into place.
Speculators that actively try to sell their domains quite likely cause more domains to be registered, and so they increase the Internic sales revenue.
The sold domains are usually ones that would have been registered anyway, or at least this is a very large portion of it. So that argument fails. For those sold, this only means the registration is done a littler earlier than otherwise. Now, what about the ones that are not sold, which come up past due, on hold, and eventually deleted. Some of them _may_ sell within a year or so, so the speculator _will_ want to hold on to them somehow. So they re-register them again. There probably is a re-register war now going on. Many companies who have been approached to buy back their own trademark have been told by InterNIC or their ISPs to just wait for the domain to be deleted and just register it. The speculators, catching on to that, try to beat them to the punch. This war has probably resulted in "registration spam" where the speculator submits repeated templates, perhaps once per day, to re-register that domain hoping to narrow the window in which it is available to others.
I haven't seen any evidence that the costs of their non-completed transactions are more than cost of their completed transactions. It costs
My registrations are taking many days because the system is flooded.
them much more to fill out the registration template and scan the news than it does for Internic to (automatically) process the registration. If they don't sell more than their time is worth, they won't be able to afford to keep doing it. So it doesn't make any sense that they register to many hundreds of thousands of domains per successful registration.
I could throw together a script in a few minutes that could submit to InterNIC more templates in a few hours than they get in a week. I could totally flood InterNIC. But it would also be a denial of service, to InterNIC, and to all of us, too. The costs to speculators is on par with the costs to spammers. Computers make it easy to do.
And if they generate a net-gain for Internic, thats a good thing.
Up front payment probably will do that. Speculators won't go away. But at least they get to help pay for the systems we have to use.
The only speculators that might be able to register thousands of domains with little effort are the ones who register on-hold domains. But they are doing a favor for Internic, because they are collecting fees. More importantly, they will ultimately encourage people to make their payments on time. Thats a good thing for Internic.
There aren't any fees involved if the domains are simply being dropped. Those that do go on hold for oversights and late payments would get paid soon anyway. The speculator probably ends up delaying it even further due to the injected negotiations that the previous owner now has to do to get their domain back.
Quite possibly, Internic can improve its efficiency with regard to domain expirations and re-registrations. But that doesn't mean that one should go though contortions to stop speculators.
Paying up front is not a contortion. It is annoying to lose some WHOIS data (I've already had one customer who hadn't paid their bill and got put on hold, but said that whois doesn't say it's on hold). Maybe if up front payments go into place, the whois data can be restored for the most part.
I certainly don't want to give up the current system that allows one to register domains with delayed or canceled payment and immediate duplicate notification.
It's certainly convenient to pay later. But it's not that great of a difference to me. It will affect the way we operate, because we currently register domains for customers and have the invoices sent to them. We register the customer as ADMIN and BILLING contact and let them be TECHNICAL if they want to be. Up front payment would mean we have to have them go to the web page to enter their CC number. -- -- *-----------------------------* Phil Howard KA9WGN * -- -- | Inturnet, Inc. | Director of Internet Services | -- -- | Business Internet Solutions | eng at intur.net | -- -- *-----------------------------* phil at intur.net * --
participants (5)
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Alex "Mr. Worf" Yuriev -
Dean Anderson -
Patrick Greenwell -
Phil Howard -
Randy Bush