Vadim continues in the NAVYJOBS.COM thread:

It is much better to make dot-envy less sexy by *mandating* minimal tree depth under existing domains. Old allocations may be grandfathered, and people should be made aware that keeping first-level domain names *is* antisocial.

Here we go again! Sorry by friend, but 'social engineering' by stimulating to the emotional organs of the human central nervous system is also unacceptable. What really perplexes me..... Why are so many of the so called 'libertarians of the Internet' so quick to jump on the 'antisocial'.... use negative peer pressure tactic? Social engineering via low level emotional guilt complexes is a fairly 'low-order' solution for complex technical problems. In this case, the Name Space issue, is not complex. Having a scalable system with distributed root names servers, subservers, and nameservers is not difficult nor overtly expensive. There is little reason to start a 'fear' campaign concerning the DNS name space, similar to the 'renumber or die' jihad out of the famous zealous WG. Just fund and fix it with money... maybe send your ISP profits to NANOG.ORG and build a technical solution. It is not impossible nor impractical.

How about ceasing .COM allocations altogether? There's .US and .INT.

(smiling and laughing and the statement above) I was under the impression that the new (high) $50 a year domain registration fee was going to help finance the system of nameservers. Obviously, or perhaps mistakenly, this is wrong. Many paid hard earned currency for .COM domains, it generated revenue; now 'technocrats' suggest it should be deleted (must be just a rhetorical statement 0-) Please make no mistake about it, people of Planet Internet.... " Social Engineering is Not an Acceptable Alternative for Technical Innovation. " -Tim Bass +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Tim Bass | #include<campfire.h> | | Principal Network Systems Engineer | for(beer=100;beer>1;beer++){ | | The Silk Road Group, Ltd. | take_one_down(); | | | pass_it_around(); | | http://www.silkroad.com/ | } | | | back_to_work(); /*never reached */ | +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+

As much as it pains me to continue this thread, so far no one has stated or challenged the obvious solution.

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If I had my way, we would just have country code TLD's and .INT, and .INT would be restricted as it is now do international treaty orgs. However, the market speaks loudly and those of us who do not listen to it will find ourselves sidelined.

The market also "speaks" for address portability and cars which make million miles on a gallon.

But the market doesn't speak in these issue, it maybe whines, but there isn't anyone that has put up the cash on the table to do either of these, while they are both technically possible, they are not economically practical.

I quite agree that we should go with customer demand, but -- as long as the road does not go into a nice solid brick wall.

If we won't actively fight dot-envy we're going to get into serious name collision problems. And, no, many many TLDs do not change the nature of the problem and just move it one level higher. (Want to bet that as soon as new TLDs will be allowed ATT's lawyers would clamour for "ATT" top-level domain?)

The question is, is this really a bad thing? I would say that it isn't. It the IANA, charges $10,000 - $100,000 annually to anyone that wanted a TLD, I think we would be fairly well off, at $10,000 a registry would need 200 - 2000 sub domains at $50/year for it to pay its fees. I say that if you charge on the order of $100,000/year, only people that are commercial registries will be holding TLDs. You allow all of the ISO country codes to continue as is. Network Solutions can have first bid on COM, NET, ORG, EDU, etc., and charge whatever it wants. These TLD registry fees go to funding root name servers, BIND, ISC, etc.

Flattening domain name tree by adding more TLDs is the Wrong Thing. It is totally bogus.

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My original proposal was to create enough (tens of thousands) of TLD's such that this sort of small minded protectionist idiocy would be impractical.

It is much better to make dot-envy less sexy by *mandating* minimal tree depth under existing domains. Old allocations may be grandfathered, and people should be made aware that keeping first-level domain names *is* antisocial.

Peer pressure isn't going to cut it, there are more of "them", than there are of "us". If someone wants to register in 10,000 TLDs, at $50 each, let them. If .COM is a sewer, let it. People that want to be registered in a TLD that doesn't suffer from excessive name collision, can.

How about ceasing .COM allocations altogether? There's .US and .INT.

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The IANA did not see things my way on this point, and so I suspect that the larger companies headed by people with the smaller craniums will all decide to register in every TLD.

Being antisocial does not mean being stupid. There's a tangible benefit of having names everywhere (in a sense, it is a "replacement" for shorter names, as you won't need to remember which TLD was used). Again, this is the case when market forces are directly counterproductive.

There should be a tangible cost. The .COM sewer is a direct result of regulatory distortion. Useful TLD space, is a finite resource, and everyone hear seems to agree on that. We currently have the regulator (IANA), giving a free monopoly to one organization on "useful" commercial TLD space. There are some serious issues with this proposal I will admit, perhaps the worst is, who decides how registry fees are to allocated, etc. Of course I also believe that the Internet could do well with with modern western "theory" of government, i.e by the people, of the people, for the people. But instead of we are stuck with the relatively harmless IANA dictatorship. I expect I will get several emails about TLD speculation, but I PROMISE to ignore them, because they are baseless speculation founded on lack of understanding of the free market system. I would propose a even more radical solution to the "TLD" problem, but it has some serious implications, as I have said before there is no technical reason for the de-facto implementors of name space policy, the root name servers, to listen to IANA. But I personally don't feel up to the challenge of designing a workable "democratic" governance system for the Internet. My only real thought in this, is that the only long term solution will be some sort of group elected by the population of the Internet. -- Jeremy Porter, Freeside Communications, Inc. jerry@fc.net PO BOX 80315 Austin, Tx 78708 | 1-800-968-8750 | 512-339-6094 http://www.fc.net