what problem are we solving? (was Re: ICANN opens up Pandora's Box of new TLDs)
On Thu, Jun 26, 2008 at 9:01 PM, Jean-François Mezei <jfmezei@vaxination.ca> wrote: [snip conflict examples]
Finally, will there be any performance impact on DNS servers around the world (thinking of caching issues) ?
more to the point ... what problem is ICANN trying to solve with this proposal? What about the current system that's broken, does this new system fix? It looks like a lot of thought went into the process (thanks for the PDF link, DRC), and most of the issues raised here are addressed (conflicts, abuse/phishing grabs, etc.) - I'm just still unclear what the motivation for this new system was in the first place. I'm not opposed to it if it solves a legitimate technical/operational issue that's germaine to either the operators of the Internet or the users of the Internet, but so far I can't see that this serves either of those communities. In fact, it could very well be argued that a slew of new TLDs (whether a few dozen or a few hundred) will only serve to increase complexity and add additional confusion to a system that the standard user has just now come to grips with ("www.company.com will get me Company's official, legitimate page"). perhaps somebody with more insight can explain the rationale to me (DRC?) - is there a purpose served here aside from corporate/legal interests? thanks, -- darkuncle@{gmail.com,darkuncle.net} || 0x5537F527 http://darkuncle.net/pubkey.asc for public key
On Jun 27, 2008, at 10:24 AM, Scott Francis wrote:
more to the point ... what problem is ICANN trying to solve with this proposal? ... perhaps somebody with more insight can explain the rationale to me (DRC?) - is there a purpose served here aside from corporate/legal interests?
I suspect one's view as to whether a purpose is served is largely subjective. Some folks believe that by liberalizing the rules, innovators will come up with new and interesting uses of the DNS namespace. A commonly cited example of this innovation would be the establishment of a ".BANK" top-level domain that has some assurance that registrants in that domain were actually 'certified' banks and thus would have a higher level of trust regarding banking transactions than registrants in (say) ".SCAMMERS". Other folks believe that anything that reduces the effective monopoly VeriSign has (through .COM and .NET) would be a good thing. This view holds that by increasing the number of top-level domains, you increase the opportunities for consumer (that is, domain registrant) choice, thereby reducing the value of any single top-level domain. And then there are the folks that claim "all the good names are gone", either registered appropriately or squatted on by IPR holders or scammers, thus new top-level domains are necessary in order to allow more "good names". Of course, there are a myriad other views, both positive and negative. However, more generally, ICANN was established in order to allow private (read: non-government) management of the Internet namespace under the assumption that public (read: governmental or inter-governmental, i.e. treaty organizations like the ITU) management would be too slow, too beholden to geo-political interests, and/or stifle innovation. A key component of this management was explicitly stated as being the promotion of competition. While one might argue that creating new top-level domains doesn't really promote competition given the cost of changing from one domain name to another, realistically, I figure there aren't many other ways in which additional opportunities for competition can be created. FWIW. Regards, -drc (speaking only for myself)
David Conrad (drc) writes:
Other folks believe that anything that reduces the effective monopoly VeriSign has (through .COM and .NET) would be a good thing. This view holds that by increasing the number of top-level domains, you increase the opportunities for consumer (that is, domain registrant) choice, thereby reducing the value of any single top-level domain.
The process ensures that too few new TLDs will be created for it being a threat to VeriSign, but sufficiently enough of them will be created that it will bring in lots of cash, if only with application fees, auction, but also because of the perceived rarity. As business models go, it's a fine example of how to build demand without really servicing the community.
component of this management was explicitly stated as being the promotion of competition. While one might argue that creating new top-level domains doesn't really promote competition given the cost of changing from one domain name to another, realistically, I figure there aren't many other ways in which additional opportunities for competition can be created.
Allowing anyone to register a TLD is one, but I do agree it's not necessarily a trivial model.
realistically, I figure there aren't many other ways in which additional opportunities for competition can be created. Allowing anyone to register a TLD is one, but I do agree it's not necessarily a trivial model.
we have two tools with which to build scale, distribution and hierarchy. this goes against both, though maybe the latter a bit more than the former. this is one of those where the short term business/political gain trumps the long term pain it can cause. we're not very good at this kind of trade-off because we discount future pain very very heavily. and you gotta love the spin that excess pain will be damped by the very high fee. i wonder how much of it will go to where the pain is actually felt, the root servers. randy
On Jun 27, 2008, at 11:58 AM, Phil Regnauld wrote:
The process ensures that too few new TLDs will be created for it being a threat to VeriSign
This remains to be seen, at least from my perspective. I have no idea how many TLDs are going to make it through the gauntlet or even how many applicants there will be. If nothing else, I'm sure it'll be 'interesting' (for some value of that variable). Regards, -drc
On Fri, 27 Jun 2008, Scott Francis wrote:
perhaps somebody with more insight can explain the rationale to me (DRC?) - is there a purpose served here aside from corporate/legal interests?
It strikes me as fomenting another gold rush. The notion that disputed TLDs go up for auction sounds like a request for a nice, high quality money printing device. I may have skimmed over it, but where does the money from these auctions go? At the risk of invoking Ron Paul, this will turn TLDs into a fiat currency, and devalue the rest of them. A small subset of people will profit, and everyone else loses. Off the top of my head, I can see some high dollar fist fights breaking out for .sex, .porn, .games, .hotel, etc. It'll be like the .alt tree on usenet for people with money. There may also be an actual fist fight over TLDs like .irc, .leet, .goatse, and .krad. Maybe not .krad. I agree with Scott, I'd rather see ICANN spend time on current problems instead of making new ones. - billn
On Jun 27, 2008, at 1:57 PM, Bill Nash wrote:
On Fri, 27 Jun 2008, Scott Francis wrote:
perhaps somebody with more insight can explain the rationale to me (DRC?) - is there a purpose served here aside from corporate/legal interests?
It strikes me as fomenting another gold rush. The notion that disputed TLDs go up for auction sounds like a request for a nice, high quality money printing device. I may have skimmed over it, but where does the money from these auctions go? At the risk of invoking Ron Paul, this will turn TLDs into a fiat currency, and devalue the rest of them. A small subset of people will profit, and everyone else loses.
Off the top of my head, I can see some high dollar fist fights breaking out for .sex, .porn, .games, .hotel, etc. It'll be like the .alt tree on usenet for people with money. There may also be an actual fist fight over TLDs like .irc, .leet, .goatse, and .krad. Maybe not .krad.
The Newdom WG was frequently insane, reaching its peak in the hack for which Eugene Kashpureff went to jail. I for one would not want to go there again.
I agree with Scott, I'd rather see ICANN spend time on current problems instead of making new ones.
+1
- billn
Marshall
On Jun 27, 2008, at 10:57 AM, Bill Nash wrote:
I'd rather see ICANN spend time on current problems instead of making new ones.
Out of curiosity, what are the problems you feel ICANN should be spending its time on? Regards, -drc
On Fri, 27 Jun 2008, David Conrad wrote:
On Jun 27, 2008, at 10:57 AM, Bill Nash wrote:
I'd rather see ICANN spend time on current problems instead of making new ones.
Out of curiosity, what are the problems you feel ICANN should be spending its time on?
For starters, has Verisign ever been sanctioned by ICANN for it's business practices, with stupid stuff occurring as late as what, this past February (the front running debacle)? If ICANN is supposed to be encouraging competition, et cetera, why is Verisign still in business? Also, show me a single registrar that actually gaurantees their service. Almost every registrar has boilerplate user agreements that shafts the domain owner in the event of any failure, even if the registrar screws it up. I'm not talking about some standard protection against user errors or identidy theft, I'm talking about a genuine 'If our service breaks, you get to keep both halves.' Would you use a registrar with these terms of service? I bet you do. Would you use them if you had a choice? I bet you wouldn't. "Because certain states do not permit the limitation of elimination of liability for certain types of damage, $registrar's liability shall be limited to the smallest amount permitted by law. $registrar disclaims any loss or liability resulting from: 1. access delays or interruptions to our web site or domain name registration system; 3. events beyond our control (i.e. acts of God); 4. the loss of registration or processing of a domain name or the use of a domain name; 5. the failure for whatever reason to renew a domain name registration; 7. errors, omissions or misstatements; 8. deletion of, failure to store, or failure to process or act upon email messages; 9. processing of updated information to Your registration record; 11. errors taking place with regard to the processing of Your application;" I pulled a couple of lines out because they were things that I felt a registrar might actually be indemnified, in the event of, but seriously. How does an entire class of business truly serve the consumer with these kinds of policies? reg·is·trar 1. a person who keeps a record; an official recorder. 2. an agent of a bank, trust company, or other corporation who is responsible for certifying and registering issues of securities. Except for domain registrars, who are only really a registrar when they make a mistake that could cost your entire commercial enterprise. I'll be the first to admit there's been progress made on the front of preventing domain theft and other shenanigans, but when it comes down to it, running a domain registry doesn't seem to be in the best interests of the primary consumers of such a product. - billn
On Fri, 27 Jun 2008, Bill Nash wrote:
Except for domain registrars, who are only really a registrar when they make a mistake that could cost your entire commercial enterprise.
Edit: s/when/until/ Beer:30. - billn
On Jun 27, 2008, at 3:30 PM, Bill Nash wrote:
On Jun 27, 2008, at 10:57 AM, Bill Nash wrote:
Out of curiosity, what are the problems you feel ICANN should be spending its time on? For starters, has Verisign ever been sanctioned by ICANN for it's business practices,
You mean like Sitefinder?
with stupid stuff occurring as late as what, this past February (the front running debacle)?
I suspect you've confused VeriSign with Network Solutions here (and I can't comment on the NetSol stuff because ICANN was named in a lawsuit on the topic).
If ICANN is supposed to be encouraging competition, et cetera, why is Verisign still in business?
Well, for one reason, people continue to register their names in (say) .NET... (:-)).
Also, show me a single registrar that actually gaurantees their service. [concerns about registrars]
You have commented on the revision to the Registrar Accreditation Agreement (http://www.icann.org/topics/raa/) I presume?
How does an entire class of business truly serve the consumer with these kinds of policies?
Read a software EULA recently? With that said, personally, I agree that more attention should be spent on the welfare of the registrants. Unfortunately, given I work for ICANN, my providing comments in the RAA public consultation along those lines would be a bit ... awkward.
I'll be the first to admit there's been progress made on the front of preventing domain theft and other shenanigans, but when it comes down to it, running a domain registry doesn't seem to be in the best interests of the primary consumers of such a product.
I'm not sure I follow this (did you mean registrar?), but I suspect it depends on the registry. So, other than slapping VeriSign and making registrars liable for more stuff, what should ICANN be spending its time on? This is a serious question (not saying I can fix anything, but I can push internally). One of the personally frustrating things about ICANN processes is the lack of input from the network operations community. One of the reasons I'm spamming the NANOG list is to try to stir up folks from this community to actually participate in ICANN processes because, as should be apparent, it actually does matter... Regards, -drc (speaking only for myself)
David Conrad wrote:
With that said, personally, I agree that more attention should be spent on the welfare of the registrants. Unfortunately, given I work for ICANN, my providing comments in the RAA public consultation along those lines would be a bit ... awkward.
Would you agree with Danny Younger (I believe this is his position) then that there should be a properly constituted & recognized registrants constituency? joly --------------------------------------------------------------- WWWhatsup NYC http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com ---------------------------------------------------------------
On Jun 27, 2008, at 8:59 PM, WWWhatsup wrote:
David Conrad wrote:
With that said, personally, I agree that more attention should be spent on the welfare of the registrants. Unfortunately, given I work for ICANN, my providing comments in the RAA public consultation along those lines would be a bit ... awkward.
Would you agree with Danny Younger (I believe this is his position) then that there should be a properly constituted & recognized registrants constituency?
Obviously speaking personally, conceptually I agree, but the challenge here has always been how do you "properly constitute and recognize registrants" in a way that doesn't allow for capture. For example, you could say 'only folks who have domain names can be part of that constituency', but in reality, the majority of domain names are held by registrars. You could add the restriction that 'registrants' must be natural persons, but how would one verify this across the entire planet? It obviously isn't impossible, but people already complain about how big ICANN is -- I can't see how having some mechanism to validate a registrant constituency won't make ICANN _much_ larger... However, lacking this, I personally believe there should be strong explicit registrant protections built into the RAA. But that's just me. Regards, -drc
One way to provide protection is too allow those who have the domain portion of any domain.(com|net|org|...) to have first dibs for the domain of any new gTLD. i.e. if nanog.org, nanog.com, nanog.net, etc. would have first dibs on nanog.thisisgreatstuff. Or is that too simplistic and fraught with division? Frank -----Original Message----- From: David Conrad [mailto:drc@virtualized.org] Sent: Saturday, June 28, 2008 7:50 AM To: WWWhatsup Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: what problem are we solving? (was Re: ICANN opens up Pandora's Box of new TLDs) On Jun 27, 2008, at 8:59 PM, WWWhatsup wrote:
David Conrad wrote:
With that said, personally, I agree that more attention should be spent on the welfare of the registrants. Unfortunately, given I work for ICANN, my providing comments in the RAA public consultation along those lines would be a bit ... awkward.
Would you agree with Danny Younger (I believe this is his position) then that there should be a properly constituted & recognized registrants constituency?
Obviously speaking personally, conceptually I agree, but the challenge here has always been how do you "properly constitute and recognize registrants" in a way that doesn't allow for capture. For example, you could say 'only folks who have domain names can be part of that constituency', but in reality, the majority of domain names are held by registrars. You could add the restriction that 'registrants' must be natural persons, but how would one verify this across the entire planet? It obviously isn't impossible, but people already complain about how big ICANN is -- I can't see how having some mechanism to validate a registrant constituency won't make ICANN _much_ larger... However, lacking this, I personally believe there should be strong explicit registrant protections built into the RAA. But that's just me. Regards, -drc
One way to provide protection is too allow those who have the domain portion of any domain.(com|net|org|...) to have first dibs for the domain of any new gTLD. i.e. if nanog.org, nanog.com, nanog.net, etc. would have first dibs on nanog.thisisgreatstuff.
Or is that too simplistic and fraught with division?
I think the point some people are trying to make is that a person could pony up the fees, get a new TLD, and then EXPECT ${FORTUNE_XXXX_COMPANY} to buy theirname.NEWTLD . Instant market. Might even be able to make the investment back the first year, and nice profit the subsequent ones just for companies keeping their name protected. Tuc/TBOH
One way to provide protection is too allow those who have the domain portion of any domain.(com|net|org|...) to have first dibs for the domain of any new gTLD. i.e. if nanog.org, nanog.com, nanog.net, etc. would have first dibs on nanog.thisisgreatstuff.
Or is that too simplistic and fraught with division?
I own iecc.com. A group of educators in Minnesota own iecc.org. A speculator in the UK owns iecc.net. Which, if any, of us gets first dibs on iecc.thisisgreatstuff? On the other hand, there is a school of thought voiced by the trademark lawyers that the main goal of new TLDs is to shake down trademark owners, who are advised by their lawyers that they have to buy defensive registrations in every new domain. ICANN helps this along by mandating a sunrise period for each new domain in which the trademark crowd can make their claims before the hoi polloi are allowed in. In any event the question of to what extent a domain name is a trademark or other identifier with scope beyond the DNS has been argued and litigated for over a decade, and we're not going to resolve it here. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, ex-Mayor "More Wiener schnitzel, please", said Tom, revealingly.
One way to provide protection is too allow those who have the domain
That's the phrase I was thinking of -- "sunrise period". All of you would get first dibs -- I don't have a good idea how it would actually be doled out or purchased. But at least you three would be first in the ring, before speculator xyz had a chance. Frank -----Original Message----- From: John Levine [mailto:johnl@iecc.com] Sent: Saturday, June 28, 2008 2:38 PM To: nanog@nanog.org Cc: frnkblk@iname.com Subject: Re: the business model, was what problem are we solving? (was Re: ICANN opens portion
of any domain.(com|net|org|...) to have first dibs for the domain of any new gTLD. i.e. if nanog.org, nanog.com, nanog.net, etc. would have first dibs on nanog.thisisgreatstuff.
Or is that too simplistic and fraught with division?
I own iecc.com. A group of educators in Minnesota own iecc.org. A speculator in the UK owns iecc.net. Which, if any, of us gets first dibs on iecc.thisisgreatstuff? On the other hand, there is a school of thought voiced by the trademark lawyers that the main goal of new TLDs is to shake down trademark owners, who are advised by their lawyers that they have to buy defensive registrations in every new domain. ICANN helps this along by mandating a sunrise period for each new domain in which the trademark crowd can make their claims before the hoi polloi are allowed in. In any event the question of to what extent a domain name is a trademark or other identifier with scope beyond the DNS has been argued and litigated for over a decade, and we're not going to resolve it here. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, ex-Mayor "More Wiener schnitzel, please", said Tom, revealingly.
That's the phrase I was thinking of -- "sunrise period".
All of you would get first dibs -- I don't have a good idea how it would actually be doled out or purchased. But at least you three would be first in the ring, before speculator xyz had a chance.
But in my case, iecc.net already belongs to a speculator. Why would we give him preference? In any event, ICANN's sunrise rules work adequately well, and they're not likely to change. R's, John
In article <alpine.BSF.1.10.0806281702530.19430@gal.iecc.com>, John Levine <johnl@iecc.com> writes
In any event, ICANN's sunrise rules work adequately well, and they're not likely to change.
Sunrise rules differ for each tld, it's one of the things that differentiates them. In Paris this week there was a short talk aimed at future tld applicants, describing what "did and didn't work" about the sunrise periods of a selection of recent new tlds. http://par.icann.org/en/node/116 -- Roland Perry
John Levine wrote:
I own iecc.com. A group of educators in Minnesota own iecc.org. A speculator in the UK owns iecc.net. Which, if any, of us gets first dibs on iecc.thisisgreatstuff?
Well, that would depend on whatever policies the owner of "thisisgreatstuff" has. More importantly, who gets first dibs at .iecc ????? Based on what I read, it will be the highest bidder. I have not seen wording that says that in cases of legitimate conflicts from existing domains, the .tld will be made unavailable period. Speculators won't be too happy with the busines potential for registering .iecc because in the end, only 3 customers will be interested in registering domains in that .tld, and if none of those have deep pockets, none of them will be interested in buying the .tld itself from the speculator. But conflicts will arise you have multiple legitimate owners of a trademark in different countries, and one of them has much deeper pockets than the others and will get the .tld for their trademark, thus devalueing/infringing on your trademark. I think that IANA should have long ago become quite strict with domain name registrations. .COM should have been only to companies operating worldwide. Websites that have portions of their site limited to local IPs (for instance BBC, and the USA networks like ABC CBS NBC, should be forced to use a "local" .TLD of their own country since they are no longer "world wide web". aka: www.abc.us instead of www.abc.com . If you want ".com" you need to be accessible worldwide. bbc.co.uk is fine because when you access it, you are aware it is a site designed for UK residents so when they tell you you can't access parts of their web site, you understand. But they shouldn't have "bbc.com" for that web site. Similarly, IANA could have setup rules so that new .TLDs would be handed out only when they have global scope, or if the tld defines a region (such as .asia or .europe). In other words, prevent a pizza place in dubai from buying the whole .PIZZA tld unless its goal is to make it available to all pizzerias around the world.
On Sat, Jun 28, 2008 at 06:19:19PM -0400, Jean-François Mezei <jfmezei@vaxination.ca> wrote a message of 47 lines which said:
I think that IANA should have long ago become quite strict with domain name registrations. .COM should have been only to companies operating worldwide.
Wow, ".fr", like many ccTLDs, spent a lot of time and money in this Soviet-style regulation a long time ago. We checked business records, asked customers for more paper, refused applications... As an obvious result, many people choosed ".com" over ".fr". In several steps (2000, 2004 and 2006), ".fr" relaxed its rules so, now, there is no human checking. Most other ccTLDs did the same at this time or before. Should ".com" had rules like the one you suggest (how do you check a business record from a company in Thailand? Or in Tadjikistan?) ".fr" would have had been in better position against it :-)
In article <!&!AAAAAAAAAAAuAAAAAAAAAKTyXRN5/+lGvU59a+P7CFMBAN6gY+ZG84BMpVQcAbDh1IQAA AATbSgAABAAAAAP+1+63SBGRYYQR0hFiqgsAQAAAAA=@iname.com>, Frank Bulk - iNAME <frnkblk@iname.com> writes
One way to provide protection is too allow those who have the domain portion of any domain.(com|net|org|...) to have first dibs for the domain of any new gTLD. i.e. if nanog.org, nanog.com, nanog.net, etc. would have first dibs on nanog.thisisgreatstuff.
Or is that too simplistic and fraught with division?
perry.com perry.net perry.org perry.eu (etc...) and one of mine: perry.co.uk All have different registrants. Now, what I did think this week in Paris, listening to all this stuff, was that maybe there could be one big race/auction for something like mytrademark.sunrise, and then all the sunrise periods of all the other new tlds should automatically import as a reserved name, all the mytrademarks (but if the registration wasn't taken up by the end of the sunrise period, it could be thrown back in the pot). -- Roland Perry
On Sat, Jun 28, 2008 at 12:49:35PM -0500, Frank Bulk - iNAME wrote:
One way to provide protection is too allow those who have the domain portion of any domain.(com|net|org|...) to have first dibs for the domain of any new gTLD. i.e. if nanog.org, nanog.com, nanog.net, etc. would have first dibs on nanog.thisisgreatstuff.
Or is that too simplistic and fraught with division?
Oh, ick. No, it's just dumb. Could someone, anyone, anywhere, point me to *any case law in any jurisdiction whatsoever* which tends even to *suggest* that the mere purchase and deployment of a domain name *in itself* in any way constitutes infringement upon the rights of some holder of a trademark to some component of that domain name? or else shut the hell up about it, already? Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com '87 e24 St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274 Those who cast the vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything. -- (Joseph Stalin)
In article <20080630210640.GH8195@cgi.jachomes.com>, Jay R. Ashworth <jra@baylink.com> writes
Could someone, anyone, anywhere, point me to *any case law in any jurisdiction whatsoever* which tends even to *suggest* that the mere purchase and deployment of a domain name *in itself* in any way constitutes infringement upon the rights of some holder of a trademark to some component of that domain name?
Several at this website, I recommend starting with the "MARKSANDSPENCER.COM" case (as I remember it taking place). http://www.domainhandbook.com/dd2.html -- Roland Perry
David Conrad wrote:
... part of that constituency', but in reality, the majority of domain names are held by registrars. ...
I didn't know that. Can you point me to some data? Eric
Bill Nash wrote:
Off the top of my head, I can see some high dollar fist fights breaking out for .sex, .porn, .games, .hotel, etc. It'll be like the .alt tree on usenet for people with money. There may also be an actual fist fight over TLDs like .irc, .leet, .goatse, and .krad. Maybe not .krad.
Say I am a pastry chef, and I pay $40 per year for "pastry.com", I got it because I signed up early and now cherish my domain name. I am a small business. But now, some rich guy can come in and bid for .pastry I have no money to participate in this endeavour, and no intentions of running my own TLD. All I can do is voice an objection, but if the other guy is also involved in food, he is likely to convince ICANN's comittees that it is a legitimate request. Then you end up with pastry.com being the original small business, and .pastry being anything else. This will lead to a lot of confusion. Yeah, for guys with deep pockets like yahoo, google, banks, GE and oil companies, they won't even notice a dent in their wallets when they register their own .TLD . For small businesses who worked early to get THEY name attached to a .com, they now see the value of their domain name evaporate because anyone else can now use a confusing variation of it and you just don't have the money to bid/auction against them I didn't have the time to carefully read all the documents that were pointed to here, but are there any requirements for a TLD to operate a true WHOIS server so people can easily verify the indetity of some site using a new .TLD ? (aka: to enable people to see that pastry.com is the original shop, while www.pastry is some impostor who started a pastry shop that is unrelated to pastry.com)
On Fri, 27 Jun 2008 17:04:19 EDT, =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jean-Fran=E7ois_Mezei?= said:
Say I am a pastry chef, and I pay $40 per year for "pastry.com", I got it because I signed up early and now cherish my domain name. I am a small business.
But now, some rich guy can come in and bid for .pastry
This will prove interesting for users who are still using browsers that will automagically prepend 'www.' and append '.com'.. :)
While doing the groceries, I got to think about this issue. There have been complaints in the past about difficulty in getting new legitimate TLDs approved by ICANN. (image of ICANN being too USA centric etc etc etc). So I understand a move towards a more documented and "logical" process to get new .TLDs approved adn setup. Right now, whethere real or not, there is an image that the .TLDs have been vetted and are operated by reputable people and used for legitimate purposes. (yeah, that image might be tarnished in some circles). But my uneducated opinion is that this current project appears to let the .TLD loose and this will result in top level domains being meaningless, without any trust. There should have been an evolution from a tightly controlled small set of TLDs towards alowly growing set of TLDs done fairly and openly. Going whole hog on auctioning anything and everything is a bit too much fo a revolution in my opinion. The way I see it from quick read, by default you can get anything registered as a .TLD unless someone else justifies why you shouldn't get it, or if it is truly obscene. There should have be a "in between" where people still have to justify a new .TLD and only allow TLDs that are generic and allow many different entities to participate. (as opposed to using a private trademark as a .TLD where only one company can participate).
On Jun 27, 2008, at 6:11 PM, Jean-François Mezei wrote:
But my uneducated opinion is that this current project appears to let the .TLD loose and this will result in top level domains being meaningless, without any trust.
Given the complexity of the new gTLD process, I think it safe to say that there will be quite significant vetting of pretty much all aspects of new TLD applications. The press reports that say 'the floodgates have been opened' simply aren't true.
There should have been an evolution from a tightly controlled small set of TLDs towards alowly growing set of TLDs done fairly and openly.
There has been. There was an initial set of 7 new TLDs (biz, info, name, museum, coop, aero, pro) back in 2002. There was much (justifiable IMHO) unhappiness about the process that created these TLDs. ICANN went back to the drawing board and came up with a new process ('sponsored' TLDs) which resulted in travel, cat, jobs, mobi, tel, and post (xxx was in this crowd but was shot down). There was much (justifiable IMHO) unhappiness about the process that created these TLDs. ICANN went back to the drawing board and came up with a new process. And here we are. I'm sure ICANN got it exactly right this time... (OK, maybe not :-)). Regards, -drc
On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 05:04:19PM -0400, Jean-Fran?ois Mezei wrote:
Bill Nash wrote:
Off the top of my head, I can see some high dollar fist fights breaking out for .sex, .porn, .games, .hotel, etc. It'll be like the .alt tree on usenet for people with money. There may also be an actual fist fight over TLDs like .irc, .leet, .goatse, and .krad. Maybe not .krad.
Say I am a pastry chef, and I pay $40 per year for "pastry.com", I got it because I signed up early and now cherish my domain name. I am a small business.
But now, some rich guy can come in and bid for .pastry
I have no money to participate in this endeavour, and no intentions of running my own TLD. All I can do is voice an objection, but if the other guy is also involved in food, he is likely to convince ICANN's comittees that it is a legitimate request.
Then you end up with pastry.com being the original small business, and .pastry being anything else. This will lead to a lot of confusion.
I don't see that, and I don't see why a holder of pastry.com would have any valid reason at all to block a .pastry TLD registry -- let's remember; we're talking about registries here, not registrars. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com '87 e24 St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274 Those who cast the vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything. -- (Joseph Stalin)
In article <Pine.LNX.4.64.0806271051500.5759@pegasus.billn.net>, Bill Nash <billn@billn.net> writes
I agree with Scott, I'd rather see ICANN spend time on current problems instead of making new ones.
Did you express that opinion to the Paris meeting? [Not an attack on you specifically, but as this process has been ongoing for at least five years, I think I detect a number of people here hastily building stables, debating what kind of door to attach, when the horse is already several blocks away.] -- Roland Perry
On Fri, 27 Jun 2008 10:24:48 PDT, Scott Francis said:
serve to increase complexity and add additional confusion to a system that the standard user has just now come to grips with ("www.company.com will get me Company's official, legitimate page").
Funny you should say that. :) On my way back from lunch, I heard an ad on the radio for a company in town that said: "or visit blueridgerealestate.org". Yep. dot-org, because the dot-com variant is owned by another company some 50 miles from here. And doing a 'whois' on both shows that "company" didn't get "company.com" because somebody else snagged it first. So it's a crap shoot regarding whether the .com gets you the "official legitimate page"...
On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 11:06 AM, <Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu> wrote:
On Fri, 27 Jun 2008 10:24:48 PDT, Scott Francis said:
serve to increase complexity and add additional confusion to a system that the standard user has just now come to grips with ("www.company.com will get me Company's official, legitimate page").
Funny you should say that. :)
On my way back from lunch, I heard an ad on the radio for a company in town that said: "or visit blueridgerealestate.org".
Yep. dot-org, because the dot-com variant is owned by another company some 50 miles from here.
And doing a 'whois' on both shows that "company" didn't get "company.com" because somebody else snagged it first. So it's a crap shoot regarding whether the .com gets you the "official legitimate page"...
that's exactly my point! it's _not_ reliable, but it's the behavior that the average user has come to expect. If we can't even guarantee reliability with the small handful of TLDs currently in use, when we start introducing arbitrary new ones to anybody that can pay, I'm concerned that it's going to make user support even more of a headache (for those of us unfortunate enough to be involved in that role, professionally or personally :)) -- darkuncle@{gmail.com,darkuncle.net} || 0x5537F527 http://darkuncle.net/pubkey.asc for public key
that's exactly my point! it's _not_ reliable, but it's the behavior that the average user has come to expect. If we can't even guarantee reliability with the small handful of TLDs currently in use, when we start introducing arbitrary new ones to anybody that can pay, I'm concerned that it's going to make user support even more of a headache (for those of us unfortunate enough to be involved in that role, professionally or personally :)) -- darkuncle@{gmail.com,darkuncle.net} || 0x5537F527 http://darkuncle.net/pubkey.asc for public key
It's amusing to see companies actually profit from this behavior. The poker gambling sites know they can't advertise on TV as a gambling site, so everyone of their ads mention *.net which is their play for free site. They know that a major of people will instead go to their *.com website which isn't a free site.
On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 12:23:28PM -0700, Scott Francis wrote:
that's exactly my point! it's _not_ reliable, but it's the behavior that the average user has come to expect. If we can't even guarantee reliability with the small handful of TLDs currently in use, when we start introducing arbitrary new ones to anybody that can pay, I'm concerned that it's going to make user support even more of a headache (for those of us unfortunate enough to be involved in that role, professionally or personally :))
That sounds like the "gun control will reduce gun crime" argument, to me. :-) If there are enough *widely used* (generic) TLDs, then *people will stop believing that ".com is the 'real' domain" (wasn't that Verisign's sales pitch, once upon a time?). Cheers -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com Designer +-Internetworking------+---------+ RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates | Best Practices Wiki | | '87 e24 St Petersburg FL USA +-http://bestpractices.wikia.com-+ +1 727 647 1274 If you can read this... thank a system administrator. Or two. --me
On Jun 27, 2008, at 12:23 PM, Scott Francis wrote:
If we can't even guarantee reliability with the small handful of TLDs currently in use, when we start introducing arbitrary new ones to anybody that can pay, I'm concerned that it's going to make user support even more of a headache
I might suggest that the assumption that reliability can be guaranteed by TLD (any number), regardless of what the labels might imply, is where things are broken. That ship has sailed (and already crashed into the rocks and sunk). Regards, -drc
On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 1:49 PM, David Conrad <drc@virtualized.org> wrote:
On Jun 27, 2008, at 12:23 PM, Scott Francis wrote:
If we can't even guarantee reliability with the small handful of TLDs currently in use, when we start introducing arbitrary new ones to anybody that can pay, I'm concerned that it's going to make user support even more of a headache
I might suggest that the assumption that reliability can be guaranteed by TLD (any number), regardless of what the labels might imply, is where things are broken. That ship has sailed (and already crashed into the rocks and sunk).
indeed, TLD provides no assurance of authenticity. However, my concern is that adding add'l TLDs will make this problem worse, not better - what little assurance we have that e.g. bankofamerica.com is the legitimate (or should I say, _a_ legitimate) site for the financial institution of the same name becomes less certain when we have e.g. bank.of.america, www.bankofamerica.bank, www.bankofamerica, www.bofa, and other variants. Perhaps the solution is to devalue names (through the introduction of some theoretically unlimited number of variants) to the point that users come to rely upon reputation-based systems (e.g. PageRank) exclusively. Or maybe I'm just brewing a tempest in a teapot. *shrug* What I do know is that the folks @ ICANN who were involved in this are universally more experienced than myself, so I think perhaps I'll pipe down for a while and see what happens. :) cheers, -- darkuncle@{gmail.com,darkuncle.net} || 0x5537F527 http://darkuncle.net/pubkey.asc for public key
On Jun 27, 2008, at 2:02 PM, Scott Francis wrote:
what little assurance we have that e.g. bankofamerica.com is the legitimate (or should I say, _a_ legitimate) site for the financial institution of the same name becomes less certain when we have e.g. bank.of.america, www.bankofamerica.bank, www.bankofamerica, www.bofa, and other variants.
I agree, but we already face that problem now. Is bankofamerica. {org,net,us} the same thing as bankofamerica.com? I would agree that a flood of new TLDs would exacerbate the problem, but I suspect the difference is between a run over on a two lane street versus being run over on a five lane highway. In both cases, you're road pizza....
Perhaps the solution is to devalue names (through the introduction of some theoretically unlimited number of variants) to the point that users come to rely upon reputation-based systems (e.g. PageRank) exclusively.
I suspect the right answer is to rely not on reputation or labels, but rather stronger security credentials, e.g., valid X.509 certs, PGP/GPG signatures, etc. Of course, that's been true for a while now. Regards, -drc
On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 10:24:48AM -0700, Scott Francis wrote:
more to the point ... what problem is ICANN trying to solve with this proposal?
Oh, that's quite straightforward: insufficient registrar revenue. ---Rsk
On Thu, Jun 26, 2008 at 9:01 PM, Jean-François Mezei <jfmezei@vaxination.ca> wrote: [snip conflict examples]
Finally, will there be any performance impact on DNS servers around the world (thinking of caching issues) ?
more to the point ... what problem is ICANN trying to solve with this proposal? What about the current system that's broken, does this new system fix? It looks like a lot of thought went into the process (thanks for the PDF link, DRC), and most of the issues raised here are addressed (conflicts, abuse/phishing grabs, etc.) - I'm just still unclear what the motivation for this new system was in the first place.
I'm not opposed to it if it solves a legitimate technical/operational issue that's germaine to either the operators of the Internet or the users of the Internet, but so far I can't see that this serves either of those communities. In fact, it could very well be argued that a slew of new TLDs (whether a few dozen or a few hundred) will only serve to increase complexity and add additional confusion to a system that the standard user has just now come to grips with ("www.company.com will get me Company's official, legitimate page").
Yes. It completely marginalizes the remaining positive qualities of the Domain Name System as a way to find things, in the name of giving people "more options." Let me start by saying that I believe that the trends in the DNS have been going the wrong way for well over a decade. The insistence on the part of many that the namespace be flattened is just a poor choice. People are now used to trying "<foo>.com" to reach a company. In some cases, this makes fair sense; I can see why "ibm.com" or "seagate.com" are that way, even though in some cases there are namespace collisions with other trademarks. In others, it's ridiculous - why the heck do I get someplace in California when I go to "martyspizza.com", rather than our local very excellent pizza place? (sadly this example is less effective now, they managed to get "martyspizza.net" a few years back). We never had any business allowing small, local businesses to register in .com, or non-networking companies to register in .net, or non-organizations in .org... but a whole generation of Internet "professionals" "knew better" and the end result at the end of the road is that DNS will end up being almost as useless as IPv4 numbers for identifying the more obscure bits of the Internet. It would have been much better for us to fix some of the obvious problems with DNS back in the day. Instead, we didn't bother, and instead allowed "market forces" to dictate what happened next. This of course got buyers whatever they wanted (which was generally "short names!"), but what buyers wanted didn't necessarily map well into what would have made sense for /users/ of the system, which would have been "predictability of names." We are now reaping the evolution of that into even further mayhem. I look forward to many more years of having to remember that Marty's Pizza is "martyspizza.net" instead of "martyspizza.brookfield.wi.us", that Milwaukee's Department of Public Works is at "mpw.net" instead of "dpw.ci.milwaukee.wi.us", etc. I've kept this short and have omitted lots. ... JG -- Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net "We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN) With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.
Yes. It completely marginalizes the remaining positive qualities of the Domain Name System as a way to find things, in the name of giving people "more options."
That never existed and never made any sense. DNS is a naming scheme. Entities choose names that are expressive, not informative. You may have a hard time remembering the name of the Chinese restaurant around the corner from you because it's not named "The Chinese Restaurant Around the Corner from Joe Greco", but naming businesses for your convenience is just not reasonable. What's convenient for you is not what's convenient for me. You should name the restaurant, for your purposes, with a name that is convenient for you. I'll do the same. If you and I have to exchange the name of a place, we need to map our convenient names to a proper name. But we don't normally have to use proper names, they're inconvenient. These type of mappings have to be competitive because different people have different requirements. If you want an easy way for you to find a company based on what you consider its name to be, find one that works for you. But DNS works differently, it maps *authoritative* names to businesses. It's more like how you map a business name to the responsible entity when you file a lawsuit. It has no business trying to be easy for humans to use and understand if that compromises its use for its actual purpose.
Let me start by saying that I believe that the trends in the DNS have been going the wrong way for well over a decade. The insistence on the part of many that the namespace be flattened is just a poor choice. People are now used to trying "<foo>.com" to reach a company. In some cases, this makes fair sense; I can see why "ibm.com" or "seagate.com" are that way, even though in some cases there are namespace collisions with other trademarks. In others, it's ridiculous - why the heck do I get someplace in California when I go to "martyspizza.com", rather than our local very excellent pizza place? (sadly this example is less effective now, they managed to get "martyspizza.net" a few years back).
I agree. People should not do that. They should use some kind of mapping service that works for the kinds of mappings they expect. DNS is not that service, cannot be that service, and never will be that service. DNS is a technical service to map slow-changing authoritative names to their current numbers.
We never had any business allowing small, local businesses to register in .com, or non-networking companies to register in .net, or non-organizations in .org... but a whole generation of Internet "professionals" "knew better" and the end result at the end of the road is that DNS will end up being almost as useless as IPv4 numbers for identifying the more obscure bits of the Internet.
Which is fine since that's not what DNS is for. DNS maps slow-changing authoritative names to fast-changing numbers. I do agree that people do in practice use DNS this way. And I do agree that making it work worse for them is not the best thing in the world. But making a bad solution a bit worse is not a particularly big deal. People have almost completely stopped even exchanging URLs with each other manually. The exchange links specifically mapped through URL mapping services so that they're easier to communicate, or they put a link on a web page or in an email. DS
Yes. It completely marginalizes the remaining positive qualities of the Domain Name System as a way to find things, in the name of giving people "more options."
That never existed and never made any sense. DNS is a naming scheme. Entities choose names that are expressive, not informative.
You may have a hard time remembering the name of the Chinese restaurant around the corner from you because it's not named "The Chinese Restaurant Around the Corner from Joe Greco", but naming businesses for your convenience is just not reasonable. What's convenient for you is not what's convenient for me.
I never said it was. I'm not arguing for me to be able to rename someone else's business.
You should name the restaurant, for your purposes, with a name that is convenient for you. I'll do the same. If you and I have to exchange the name of a place, we need to map our convenient names to a proper name. But we don't normally have to use proper names, they're inconvenient.
These type of mappings have to be competitive because different people have different requirements. If you want an easy way for you to find a company based on what you consider its name to be, find one that works for you.
I do not "consider its name to be" some random thing. I consider it to be what it calls itself. There are already rules for that sort of thing outside of the Internet, for example, I am not allowed to create a company name that duplicates a company name that already exists. The problem is that while I can go and register a "Mycompany LLC" in Wisconsin and a "Mycompany LLC" in Illinois, there is only one "mycompany.com" available, though "mycompany.wi.us" and "mycompany.il.us" are both available and do not collide.
But DNS works differently, it maps *authoritative* names to businesses. It's more like how you map a business name to the responsible entity when you file a lawsuit. It has no business trying to be easy for humans to use and understand if that compromises its use for its actual purpose.
That's one hell of an if, and it doesn't seem to even be true. If you read 805 and other foundation documents, it seems clear that the goal was to *replace* a difficult-to-use mail relaying and routing scheme for mail addresses with something that was easier for ... ah, yes, users to use.
Let me start by saying that I believe that the trends in the DNS have been going the wrong way for well over a decade. The insistence on the part of many that the namespace be flattened is just a poor choice. People are now used to trying "<foo>.com" to reach a company. In some cases, this makes fair sense; I can see why "ibm.com" or "seagate.com" are that way, even though in some cases there are namespace collisions with other trademarks. In others, it's ridiculous - why the heck do I get someplace in California when I go to "martyspizza.com", rather than our local very excellent pizza place? (sadly this example is less effective now, they managed to get "martyspizza.net" a few years back).
I agree. People should not do that. They should use some kind of mapping service that works for the kinds of mappings they expect. DNS is not that service, cannot be that service, and never will be that service.
That's not true. Perhaps you should go read RFC1480. (Before you make any comments, you should be aware that I *have* read 1480, and that one of the hosts used as an example in that document is currently running 50 feet away from me). For example, I *ought* to be able to find the Police Department for the City of Milwaukee at something reasonable, such as "police.ci.milwaukee.wi.us". If I then needed the police for Wauwatosa, "police.ci.wauwatosa.wi.us", or for Waukesha, "police.ci.waukesha.wi.us". 1480 is about trying to provide localization services that could ultimately result in a namespace containing vastly fewer collision issues. But to understand what I'm talking about, you really have to get rid of the ".com" mentality first. To extend that principle, companies that have an exclusively local presence probably don't need to be occupying space in a TLD. That's the Marty's Pizza example.
DNS is a technical service to map slow-changing authoritative names to their current numbers.
Which are also generally slow-changing.
We never had any business allowing small, local businesses to register in .com, or non-networking companies to register in .net, or non-organizations in .org... but a whole generation of Internet "professionals" "knew better" and the end result at the end of the road is that DNS will end up being almost as useless as IPv4 numbers for identifying the more obscure bits of the Internet.
Which is fine since that's not what DNS is for.
DNS maps slow-changing authoritative names to fast-changing numbers.
No, DNS is intended to map logical names, which are, among other things, supposed to be usable and useful to humans. "[W]e wish to create consistent methods for referencing particular resources that are similar but scattered throughout the environment." That 25-year old statement is still a nice summary of the purpose of DNS. The idea is that you can try for consistency, and where consistency is reasonable and possible, some of us still believe that it could exist.
I do agree that people do in practice use DNS this way. And I do agree that making it work worse for them is not the best thing in the world. But making a bad solution a bit worse is not a particularly big deal. People have almost completely stopped even exchanging URLs with each other manually. The exchange links specifically mapped through URL mapping services so that they're easier to communicate, or they put a link on a web page or in an email.
I don't see what you're saying as supporting ICANN's actions. If DNS is irrelevant for these purposes, then why bother "making a bad solution a bit worse." Just let it become, over the next 25 years, some mid-level directory resource that users see less and less of, until it's almost as irrelevant as IP address. (*I* don't buy that, but then again, I'm making the argument that we've really screwed up with DNS) ... JG -- Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net "We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN) With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.
On Sat, 28 Jun 2008, Joe Greco wrote:
For example, I *ought* to be able to find the Police Department for the City of Milwaukee at something reasonable, such as "police.ci.milwaukee.wi.us". If I then needed the police for Wauwatosa, "police.ci.wauwatosa.wi.us", or for Waukesha, "police.ci.waukesha.wi.us".
To extend that principle, companies that have an exclusively local presence probably don't need to be occupying space in a TLD. That's the Marty's Pizza example.
martyspizza.brookfield.wi.us works great. At what point in Marty's expansion does Marty's Pizza get to move to a TLD? The RFC leaves management decisions to an alluded to but unnamed group. Plus, WTF: John-Muir.Middle.Santa-Monica.K12.CA.US Cut and Paste or die trying. I doubt parents will remember or type that. Besides, sophisticated search engines are making Domain Names less relevant anyway. I can find Marty's Pizza in Brookfield via Google or Yahoo in a matter of seconds. Let the search engines organize the web, not DNS. Schools are going short and sweet, just like businesses, using the existing TLDs. martyspizza.net is fine. So is johnmuirsl.org. No need for 30 more or 3000 more TLDs. Beckman --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Peter Beckman Internet Guy beckman@angryox.com http://www.angryox.com/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
On Sun, Jun 29, 2008 at 1:21 PM, Peter Beckman <beckman@angryox.com> wrote:
Let the search engines organize the web, not DNS.
OK, (assuming you believe that), why keep dns around. Why not go back to just IP addrs and hosts files for those that need them. -Jim P.
On Sun, 29 Jun 2008, Jim Popovitch wrote:
On Sun, Jun 29, 2008 at 1:21 PM, Peter Beckman <beckman@angryox.com> wrote:
Let the search engines organize the web, not DNS.
OK, (assuming you believe that), why keep dns around. Why not go back to just IP addrs and hosts files for those that need them.
Because the Internet is not governemned, common misbelief aside. It's a mess of capitalism and anarchism. In fact, The Internet is the only functioning anarchu. I see no reason why search engines won't, they already do, whether we want to admit it or not, for the home user they ARE the Internet. Gadi.
-Jim P.
Gadi, I tried to find even the smallest token of operational relevance on your postings on this thread, and I'm coming up short. Could you please do us a favor and stop posting until such a time when you're able to comply with the list's AUP? Paul (not a member of MLC, my opinions only)
Paul Wall wrote: [bagged and tagged] P,K,B.
On Sun, 29 Jun 2008, Jim Popovitch wrote:
On Sun, Jun 29, 2008 at 1:21 PM, Peter Beckman <beckman@angryox.com> wrote:
Let the search engines organize the web, not DNS.
OK, (assuming you believe that), why keep dns around. Why not go back to just IP addrs and hosts files for those that need them.
DNS is useful in masking IP address changes, and for humans navigating the Internet. DNS is not useful for organizing the web. Additional TLDs isn't going to help organize the web. Search engines and portals organize the web. DNS will be increasingly less useful as the Internet continues to expand and grow, and normal non-geek non-nanog humans will increasingly rely on search engines and portals to find what they need, not domain names. Beckman --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Peter Beckman Internet Guy beckman@angryox.com http://www.angryox.com/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
On Sat, 28 Jun 2008, Joe Greco wrote:
For example, I *ought* to be able to find the Police Department for the City of Milwaukee at something reasonable, such as "police.ci.milwaukee.wi.us". If I then needed the police for Wauwatosa, "police.ci.wauwatosa.wi.us", or for Waukesha, "police.ci.waukesha.wi.us".
To extend that principle, companies that have an exclusively local presence probably don't need to be occupying space in a TLD. That's the Marty's Pizza example.
martyspizza.brookfield.wi.us works great. At what point in Marty's expansion does Marty's Pizza get to move to a TLD? The RFC leaves management decisions to an alluded to but unnamed group.
That doesn't need to be a "management decision" by some third party group. That *could* be something we would have guided people through, in the same way that 1480 provides other guidance. I see usefulness in having scopes that are local (city/village/etc), state, country, and global. There's no reason that you couldn't start out local, and as you grew, get a state level domain (martyspizza.wi.us), and if you went national (martyspizza.us), etc. In many (most!) cases, businesses do not make significant growth in a rapid fashion.
Plus, WTF: John-Muir.Middle.Santa-Monica.K12.CA.US Cut and Paste or die trying. I doubt parents will remember or type that.
Actually, that has to do with what I was talking about in continuing to develop a reasonable system. Quite frankly, if I was in that school district, I see no reason why my computer couldn't be aware of that domain, and actually have "http://john-muir" or some similar mechanism actually work. The ideal is probably more complex in implementation, but does not need to be more complex in use.
Besides, sophisticated search engines are making Domain Names less relevant anyway. I can find Marty's Pizza in Brookfield via Google or Yahoo in a matter of seconds. Let the search engines organize the web, not DNS.
Schools are going short and sweet, just like businesses, using the existing TLDs. martyspizza.net is fine. So is johnmuirsl.org. No need for 30 more or 3000 more TLDs.
I would agree that we don't need more TLD's. But the namespace, as it exists, is messy, and it's nasty to expect that people will always have to use a browser and a search engine to find their destination's domain name. ... JG -- Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net "We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN) With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.
On Mon, 30 Jun 2008, Joe Greco wrote:
I see usefulness in having scopes that are local (city/village/etc), state, country, and global. There's no reason that you couldn't start out local, and as you grew, get a state level domain (martyspizza.wi.us), and if you went national (martyspizza.us), etc. In many (most!) cases, businesses do not make significant growth in a rapid fashion.
The selfish will abuse the lack of RFC1480 management and go straight to martyspizza.us, even though they have one store, because it's available at the time.
Actually, that has to do with what I was talking about in continuing to develop a reasonable system. Quite frankly, if I was in that school district, I see no reason why my computer couldn't be aware of that domain, and actually have "http://john-muir" or some similar mechanism actually work. The ideal is probably more complex in implementation, but does not need to be more complex in use.
Does the DNS provider or ISP decide that? Or are you just referring to a bookmarking feature in your browser? Which then makes moot any RFC1480 friendly URL. Namespaces in DNS that are globally recognized are different than your example above.
I would agree that we don't need more TLD's. But the namespace, as it exists, is messy, and it's nasty to expect that people will always have to use a browser and a search engine to find their destination's domain name.
Nobody can or will cleanup the existing namespaces. New TLDs will continue to make them more messy. More court battles over new TLDs will come up. The wealthy will get their own TLDs (I can't afford .beckman, but I'm sure Beckman Instruments can, who already own beckman.com, and I'll just be screwed again), and small guys will not. Search engines and browser tools will render the value of domain names to approaching zero, .com will remain the namespace of choice, and that new TLDs will be for the wealthy i.e. http://google/ and http://coke/ and there will be more court battles for those trademarks. Beckman --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Peter Beckman Internet Guy beckman@angryox.com http://www.angryox.com/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
On Mon, 30 Jun 2008, Joe Greco wrote:
I see usefulness in having scopes that are local (city/village/etc), state, country, and global. There's no reason that you couldn't start out local, and as you grew, get a state level domain (martyspizza.wi.us), and if you went national (martyspizza.us), etc. In many (most!) cases, businesses do not make significant growth in a rapid fashion.
The selfish will abuse the lack of RFC1480 management and go straight to martyspizza.us, even though they have one store, because it's available at the time. ... For which, if you are so inclined, you may credit, or damn, NeuStar. The original bid to the US DoC did not envision the "dotless" or "flat" model displacing the "dotfull" or "hierarchical" model. The US DoC has not yet seen fit to solicit tenders from operators intending to offer a
Peter Beckman wrote: policy model other than that of the current operator. For those of you in the US, who think its worth doing something about, you've about three years to get your congress critter motivated to enable the DoC to find an alternative criteria to the one that allowed the incumbent operator to win the renewal. Some reason(s) why "flat" and all its "first-come, only-served" model is less useful than something else.
On Mon, 30 Jun 2008, Joe Greco wrote:
I see usefulness in having scopes that are local (city/village/etc), state, country, and global. There's no reason that you couldn't start out local, and as you grew, get a state level domain (martyspizza.wi.us), and if you went national (martyspizza.us), etc. In many (most!) cases, businesses do not make significant growth in a rapid fashion.
The selfish will abuse the lack of RFC1480 management and go straight to martyspizza.us, even though they have one store, because it's available at the time.
That's probably a reasonable reason to do a modest amount of research on registrants. Of course, the idea that a registrar has any duty other than to take money and "make it so" is heretical, I know.
Actually, that has to do with what I was talking about in continuing to develop a reasonable system. Quite frankly, if I was in that school district, I see no reason why my computer couldn't be aware of that domain, and actually have "http://john-muir" or some similar mechanism actually work. The ideal is probably more complex in implementation, but does not need to be more complex in use.
Does the DNS provider or ISP decide that? Or are you just referring to a bookmarking feature in your browser? Which then makes moot any RFC1480 friendly URL. Namespaces in DNS that are globally recognized are different than your example above.
I would actually like to have seen a continued evolution of DNS towards something slightly more useful. Implementation as a bookmark in a browser would not make any sense; the Internet is not just the World Wide Web. The search feature within a resolver is one reasonable starting point for considering how you might go about this sort of thing, but I expect that the solution might not really resemble anything currently existing.
I would agree that we don't need more TLD's. But the namespace, as it exists, is messy, and it's nasty to expect that people will always have to use a browser and a search engine to find their destination's domain name.
Nobody can or will cleanup the existing namespaces. New TLDs will continue to make them more messy. More court battles over new TLDs will come up. The wealthy will get their own TLDs (I can't afford .beckman, but I'm sure Beckman Instruments can, who already own beckman.com, and I'll just be screwed again), and small guys will not.
Search engines and browser tools will render the value of domain names to approaching zero, .com will remain the namespace of choice, and that new TLDs will be for the wealthy i.e. http://google/ and http://coke/ and there will be more court battles for those trademarks.
It may go that way, but should we let it do so without comment? ... JG -- Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net "We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN) With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.
On Sun, Jun 29, 2008 at 01:21:07PM -0400, Peter Beckman wrote:
Plus, WTF: John-Muir.Middle.Santa-Monica.K12.CA.US Cut and Paste or die trying. I doubt parents will remember or type that.
No one does either. They search for it, or pick it out of an email. But *I can read that domain name and know what it points to*. More importantly, it is possible for me to learn that k12.ca.us is picky about whom it hands it's subdomains to, and therefore I can have a reasonable guess that (DNS spoofing aside) that domain actually belongs to a school. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com '87 e24 St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274 Those who cast the vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything. -- (Joseph Stalin)
On 28 Jun 2008, at 22:31, Joe Greco wrote:
For example, I *ought* to be able to find the Police Department for the City of Milwaukee at something reasonable, such as "police.ci.milwaukee.wi.us". If I then needed the police for Wauwatosa, "police.ci.wauwatosa.wi.us", or for Waukesha, "police.ci.waukesha.wi.us".
About as much as I ought to be able to reach the Canadian army at army.mil, or the Canadian Citizenship and Immigration department at cic.gov. There is no single namespace that makes sense for everybody. For every single person who says "I ought to be able to do X to find Y" there will be someone else for whom Y would be a surprising result for X. The boat sailed on enforcing regulations for appropriate registrations under particular TLDs long ago. I remember when registering a .NET name for a small, south-western Ontario ISP in about 1995 being told "sorry, that TLD is for ISPs only" and having to prove that I was, in fact, working for an ISP before I could get the delegation. Imagine that happening now? The DNS had its origins in a desire to use names instead of addresses, because names are easier to remember. But really, the fact that naive users type raw URLs into browsers is an indication that we have more work to do, not that naive users will always need to be exposed to raw URLs. We are already at the point where a significant proportion of the Internet population types names into Google or Yahoo! or Microsoft Live Search, and never reference URLs in the raw unless they are accessed through bookmarks. An increasing number of people use Facebook more for e-mail than they use e-mail for e-mail. If this is a trend, then perhaps we can imagine the day where the average Internet user pays about as much attention to domain names as they do to IP addresses today. All these conversations about what should or should not be possible in the namespace are pointless. The degrees of freedom are too enormous for any single person or organisation to be able to make even a vaguely accurate guess at what the stable state should be. The only decision that is required is whether new generic top-level domains are desired. If not, do nothing. Otherwise, shake as much energy into the system as possible and sit back and let it find its own steady state. Joe
On Sun, Jun 29, 2008 at 02:14:58PM -0400, Joe Abley wrote:
The only decision that is required is whether new generic top-level domains are desired. If not, do nothing. Otherwise, shake as much energy into the system as possible and sit back and let it find its own steady state.
Joe
possession and use of classV explosives is regulated in most jurisdictions. but if you think that if we pack enough C4 into the DNS and set it off, that we might find equalibrium, you might be right. :) the result will still be a flat namespace, (perhaps a crater where the namespace was). one might legitimately argue that ICANN is in need of some serious regulation.... that can happen at that national level or on the international level. --bill
--On 29 June 2008 23:59 +0000 bmanning@vacation.karoshi.com wrote:
one might legitimately argue that ICANN is in need of some serious regulation....
that can happen at that national level or on the international level.
It is very likely that "serious regulation" particularly at an "international level" would have a way more degenerate effect on DNS operations than adding a bunch of new entries into the root. Be careful about what you legitimately argue for... I'm still having a hard time seeing what everyone is getting worked up about. Can anyone point to an example of a reasonably plausible bad thing, that could happen as a result of doubling, tripling, or even increasing by an order of magnitude the size of the root zone. Sure, nefarious use of say .local could cause a few problems but this is pretty inconceivable given that: 1) most estimates I've seen of the cost of setting up a TLD start at around $500,000 (probably a bit over the credit limit on a stolen credit card #). 2) These are easily fixed by adding known large uses like to this to the formal reserved list. 3) I'm sure that these will in any case be caught well before deployment under the proposed filtering process. So, other than a change in the number of various DNS related money chutes and their net recipients, what are the actual operational issues here? -- Rob.
I'm still having a hard time seeing what everyone is getting worked up about.
Maybe it's not that bad. The eventual result is instead of having a billion .COM SLDs, there are a billion TLDs: all eggs in one basket, the root zone -- there will be so many gTLD servers, no DNS resolver can cache the gTLD server lookups, so almost every DNS query will now involve an additional request to the root, instead of (usually) a request to a TLD server (where in the past the TLD servers' IP would still be cached for most lookups). Ultimately that is a 1/3 increase in number of DNS requests, say to lookup www.example.com if there wasn't a cache hit. In that case, I would expect the increase in traffic seen by root servers to be massive. Possible technical ramifications that haven't been considered with the proper weight, and ICANN rushing ahead towards implementation in 2009 without having provided opportunity for internet & ops community input before developing such drastic plans? Massive further sell-out of the root zone (a public resource) for profit? Further commercialization of the DNS? Potentially giving some registrants advantageous treatment at the TLD level, which has usually been available to registrants on more equal terms?? [access to TLDs merely first-come, first-served] Vanity TLD space may make ".COM" seem boring. Visitors will expect names like "MYSITE.SHOES", and consider other sites like myshoestore1234.com "not-legitimate" or "not secure" The lucky organization who won the ICANN auction and got to run the SHOES TLD may price subdomains at $10000 minimum for a 1-year registration (annual auction-based renewal/registration in case of requests to register X.TLD by multiple entities) and registrants under vanity TLD to sign non-compete agreements and other pernicious EULAs and contracts of adhesion merely to be able to put up their web site, As a subdomain of what _LOOKS_ like a generic name. And, of course, http://shoes/ reserved for the TLD registrant's billion-$ shoe store, with DNS registration a side-business (outsourced to some DNS registrar using some "domain SLD resale" service). The possibilities that vanity TLD registry opens are more insidious than it was for someone to bag a good second-level domain.
Sure, nefarious use of say .local could cause a few problems but this is
I'd be more concerned about nefarious use of a TLD like ".DLL", ".EXE", ".TXT" Or other domains that look like filenames. Seeing as a certain popular operating system confounds local file access via Explorer with internet access... You may think "abcd.png" is an image on your computer... but if you type that into your address, er, location bar, it may be a website too! ".local" seems like a pretty good TLD name to be registered, compared to others, even many that have been established or proposed in the past, more general than ".city" (unincorporated areas with some sort of name also can use .local) short, general and simple (just like a gTLD should be), not highly-specific and elaborate like ".museum" -- -J
On Jun 30, 2008, at 10:43 PM, James Hess wrote:
Sure, nefarious use of say .local could cause a few problems but this is
I'd be more concerned about nefarious use of a TLD like ".DLL", ".EXE", ".TXT" Or other domains that look like filenames.
Like .INFO, .PL, .SH, and, of course, .COM? People keep making the assertion that top-level domains that have the same strings as popular file extensions will be a 'security disaster', but I've yet to see an explanation of the potential exploits. I could maybe see a problem with ".LOCAL" due to mdns or llmnr or ".1" due to the risk of someone registering "127.0.0.1", but I've yet to see any significant risk increase if (say) the .EXE TLD were created. Can someone explain (this is a serious question)?
Seeing as a certain popular operating system confounds local file access via Explorer with internet access...
I gather you're implying MS Windows does this?
You may think "abcd.png" is an image on your computer... but if you type that into your address, er, location bar, it may be a website too!
Is there a browser (Internet Explorer? I don't run Windows) that looks on the local file system if you don't specify 'file://'? Wouldn't that sort of annoy the folks who run (say) help.com? Regards, -drc
People keep making the assertion that top-level domains that have the same strings as popular file extensions will be a 'security disaster', but I've yet to see an explanation of the potential exploits. I could maybe see a problem with ".LOCAL" due to mdns or llmnr or ".1" due to the risk of someone registering "127.0.0.1", but I've yet to see any significant risk increase if (say) the .EXE TLD were created. Can someone explain (this is a serious question)?
Many years ago there was a wonderful web browser named Lynx. It could do all kinds of nifty things and you could build an entire information systems interface with it, including things like a menu that allowed you to select an executable program that would be run on the same remote system that was running Lynx. People who lived through this era have a vague memory that executables and URLs are in sort of the same namespace. Of course that's not true because executable files are referred to as lynxexec:script.pl instead of http://script.pl
Seeing as a certain popular operating system confounds local file access via Explorer with internet access...
I gather you're implying MS Windows does this?
Not mine. --Michael Dillon
On Tue, 1 Jul 2008, David Conrad wrote:
I could maybe see a problem with ".LOCAL" due to mdns or llmnr or ".1" due to the risk of someone registering "127.0.0.1"
RFC 1123 section 2.1 says TLDs can't be purely numeric. Tony. -- f.anthony.n.finch <dot@dotat.at> http://dotat.at/ BISCAY: WEST 4 OR 5, OCCASIONALLY 6 LATER. SLIGHT OR MODERATE BECOMING ROUGH. THUNDERY SHOWERS. MODERATE OR GOOD.
On Tue, Jul 01, 2008 at 06:08:43AM -0700, David Conrad wrote:
Seeing as a certain popular operating system confounds local file access via Explorer with internet access...
I gather you're implying MS Windows does this?
Start->Run. Type in the full filename of a binary on your path. (FDISK.COM) Type in the basename of a website. (FDISK.COM) Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com '87 e24 St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274 Those who cast the vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything. -- (Joseph Stalin)
David Conrad wrote:
People keep making the assertion that top-level domains that have the same strings as popular file extensions will be a 'security disaster'
Microsoft, in its infinite wisdom and desire to not abide by standards it has not set decided that instead of relying on the Mime type (content type:) field in the HTTP response to determine how this particular content should be rendered,, it would look at the letters following the last dot in the URL. There were many viruses which were transmitted this way, with URLs ending in .EXE which meant that Microsoft blindly executed the contents fed over the web. Often, the content type: field would point to a image/jpeg type and standards compliant browsers would simply handle this as a picture with invalid contents. I am now sure if Microsoft continues to based data type decisions on what it interprets as a file extension in a URL or not. But it should not stop the world from moving on because to those who abide by standards, such things are not a problem. However, the issue of http://museum/ is an interesting one. This may affect certain sites who would have to ensure their resolver firsts tests a single node name and only add the local domain name if the first test failed. There may be sites/systems that just automatically tag on the domain name if they just see what looks like a node name.
On Jul 1, 2008, at 1:43 AM, James Hess wrote:
I'm still having a hard time seeing what everyone is getting worked up about.
Maybe it's not that bad. The eventual result is instead of having a billion .COM SLDs, there are a billion TLDs: all eggs in one basket,
There is the question of the fee structure. If the fee is really > $ 100,000 USD, then this will damp down the numbers considerably. Here is a way to estimate this - by my estimate, there are something like 1 million worldwide companies with revenues > $ 5 million USD / yr. The companies I have dealt with making ~ $ 5 million / year are hesitant to spend $ 100 K on _anything_, but maybe TLDs will be seen as the thing to have. So, I could imagine 1 million TLDs at this price level, maybe, but not many more, and maybe substantially less. How many .com domains are there ? I have a _2001_ report of 19 million. I would guess maybe 50 million by now. Would adding 1 million TLDs really be worse for the DNS system than 50 or 100 million dot com domains ? Of course, this depends on the crucial question of the fee. If it drops to $ 100 USD, then I could certainly imagine a similar number to the number of dot com domains, i.e., many millions. This seems like a good place to ask if any of that ICANN money is going to the root domains...
the root zone -- there will be so many gTLD servers, no DNS resolver can cache the gTLD server lookups, so almost every DNS query will now involve an additional request to the root, instead of (usually) a request to a TLD server (where in the past the TLD servers' IP would still be cached for most lookups).
Ultimately that is a 1/3 increase in number of DNS requests, say to lookup www.example.com if there wasn't a cache hit. In that case, I would expect the increase in traffic seen by root servers to be massive.
Possible technical ramifications that haven't been considered with the proper weight, and ICANN rushing ahead towards implementation in 2009 without having provided opportunity for internet & ops community input before developing such drastic plans?
Massive further sell-out of the root zone (a public resource) for profit? Further commercialization of the DNS? Potentially giving some registrants advantageous treatment at the TLD level, which has usually been available to registrants on more equal terms?? [access to TLDs merely first-come, first-served]
Vanity TLD space may make ".COM" seem boring. Visitors will expect names like "MYSITE.SHOES", and consider other sites like myshoestore1234.com "not-legitimate" or "not secure"
I personally doubt it, for the same reason that there is shoes.com but not nike.shoes.com. To me, the notion that people will find the shoes they want on the web by starting at http://www.shoes seems archaic, very 1995. What there may be is a raft of trademark lawsuits - for example, Shoes.com, Inc. a subsidiary of Brown Shoe Company (NYSE:BWS) presumably has some sort of trademark rights to "shoes.com". Nobody has rights to "shoes," so expect some fights here (as a potential example, between the future owners of "shoes" and companies like Nike, and maybe also shoes.com. IANAL, but I suspect that Brown Show might be able to claim that ".Shoes" might infringe on the "shoes.com" mark). Regards Marshall
The lucky organization who won the ICANN auction and got to run the SHOES TLD may price subdomains at $10000 minimum for a 1-year registration (annual auction-based renewal/registration in case of requests to register X.TLD by multiple entities) and registrants under vanity TLD to sign non-compete agreements and other pernicious EULAs and contracts of adhesion merely to be able to put up their web site,
As a subdomain of what _LOOKS_ like a generic name.
And, of course, http://shoes/ reserved for the TLD registrant's billion-$ shoe store, with DNS registration a side-business (outsourced to some DNS registrar using some "domain SLD resale" service).
The possibilities that vanity TLD registry opens are more insidious than it was for someone to bag a good second-level domain.
Sure, nefarious use of say .local could cause a few problems but this is
I'd be more concerned about nefarious use of a TLD like ".DLL", ".EXE", ".TXT" Or other domains that look like filenames.
Seeing as a certain popular operating system confounds local file access via Explorer with internet access...
You may think "abcd.png" is an image on your computer... but if you type that into your address, er, location bar, it may be a website too!
".local" seems like a pretty good TLD name to be registered, compared to others, even many that have been established or proposed in the past, more general than ".city" (unincorporated areas with some sort of name also can use .local)
short, general and simple (just like a gTLD should be),
not highly-specific and elaborate like ".museum"
-- -J
Once again, I am baffled that people would rather speculate than do five minutes of reading. (Well, maybe baffled isn't the word.)
There is the question of the fee structure. If the fee is really > $ 100,000 USD, then this will damp down the numbers considerably.
The fee isn't set, but I haven't seen any estimates under $100K.
How many .com domains are there ? I have a _2001_ report of 19 million. I would guess maybe 50 million by now.
If you had looked at the GNSO report, you wouldn't have to guess. It says there are roughly as many 2LDs in .COM as in all other TLDs combined, a pattern that hasn't changed in years.
What there may be is a raft of trademark lawsuits - for example,
That's a given. R's, John
On Tue, 01 Jul 2008 09:32:00 EDT, Marshall Eubanks said:
How many .com domains are there ? I have a _2001_ report of 19 million. I would guess maybe 50 million by now.
The last numbers I saw was 140M .coms. However, due to the incredible amount of churn due to domain-tasting by spammers, 50M *stable* .coms is probably a reasonable guess...
On Tue, Jul 01, 2008 at 12:43:54AM -0500, James Hess wrote:
Maybe it's not that bad. The eventual result is instead of having a billion .COM SLDs, there are a billion TLDs:
No, no, no, no, no. A billion people don't have half-a-mil each to set up TLD registries. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com '87 e24 St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274 Those who cast the vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything. -- (Joseph Stalin)
On Tue, 01 Jul 2008 13:13:31 EDT, "Jay R. Ashworth" said:
On Tue, Jul 01, 2008 at 12:43:54AM -0500, James Hess wrote:
Maybe it's not that bad. The eventual result is instead of having a billion .COM SLDs, there are a billion TLDs:
No, no, no, no, no.
A billion people don't have half-a-mil each to set up TLD registries.
With the US dollar continuing to tank, half-a-mil US$ *will* soon be within reach of a billion people. ;)
On Sun, 29 Jun 2008, bmanning@vacation.karoshi.com wrote:
one might legitimately argue that ICANN is in need of some serious regulation....
that can happen at that national level or on the international level.
Doesn't ICANN already work like an international regulator? Tony. -- f.anthony.n.finch <dot@dotat.at> http://dotat.at/ SHANNON ROCKALL: MAINLY SOUTHERLY 5 TO 7, OCCASIONALLY GALE 8 AND BECOMING CYCLONIC FOR A TIME, DECREASING 4 IN NORTH ROCKALL. ROUGH OR VERY ROUGH. RAIN THEN SHOWERS. POOR BECOMING GOOD.
Doesn't ICANN already work like an international regulator?
No. They are more like the IETF than the ITU, but not quite the IETF. It's hard to describe. The origins are Berkman Center for Internet and Soceity at Harvard, and what is in existence today is a far cry from the original social desire of folks that are still there today who, based on my knowledge and perception, have been mostly disenfranchised. But not quite a regulator. -M<
On Tue, Jul 01, 2008 at 04:01:34AM -0000, Martin Hannigan wrote:
Doesn't ICANN already work like an international regulator?
No. They are more like the IETF than the ITU, but not quite the IETF. It's hard to describe. The origins are Berkman Center for Internet and Soceity at Harvard, and what is in existence today is a far cry from the original social desire of folks that are still there today who, based on my knowledge and perception, have been mostly disenfranchised.
But not quite a regulator.
They're sort of like Telcordia, formerly Bellcore, in my perception: they promulgate standards that everyone follows... because everyone needs some standards to follow. Clearly, they do not have the force of regulations, or we wouldn't have people operating root zones with things in them which aren't sanctioned by ICANN ('sanctioned'. Another one of those auto-antonymic words I love, like 'academic'... :-)[1]. Cheers, -- jra [1] Don't assume from that that I'm anti-expanded-root[2] [2] Please don't start this R-war on this list again. :-) -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com '87 e24 St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274 Those who cast the vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything. -- (Joseph Stalin)
On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 07:19:45PM +0100, Tony Finch wrote:
On Sun, 29 Jun 2008, bmanning@vacation.karoshi.com wrote:
one might legitimately argue that ICANN is in need of some serious regulation....
that can happen at that national level or on the international level.
Doesn't ICANN already work like an international regulator?
Tony.
Yes they do. And out of the other side of their mouth, they deny they are a regulator. --bill
On Tue, 1 Jul 2008, bmanning@vacation.karoshi.com wrote:
On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 07:19:45PM +0100, Tony Finch wrote:
On Sun, 29 Jun 2008, bmanning@vacation.karoshi.com wrote:
one might legitimately argue that ICANN is in need of some serious regulation.... that can happen at that national level or on the international level.
Doesn't ICANN already work like an international regulator?
Yes they do. And out of the other side of their mouth, they deny they are a regulator.
So you say the solution for bad regulation is more regulation. Tony. -- f.anthony.n.finch <dot@dotat.at> http://dotat.at/ FAIR ISLE FAEROES: SOUTHEAST 5 TO 7. MODERATE OR ROUGH. OCCASIONAL RAIN. MODERATE OR GOOD, OCCASIONALLY POOR.
Tony Finch wrote:
So you say the solution for bad regulation is more regulation.
Been the liberal-socialist mantra for eons. -- Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics of System Administrators: Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to learn from their mistakes. Eppure si rinfresca ICBM Targeting Information: http://tinyurl.com/4sqczs
On Sat, Jun 28, 2008 at 08:46:33AM -0500, Joe Greco wrote:
Yes. It completely marginalizes the remaining positive qualities of the Domain Name System as a way to find things, in the name of giving people "more options."
The Domain Name System is not now, and never has been, away to *find* things, anymore than 123 Elm St, Worcester MA is a way to *find* a house. It's a way to *denote* things, uniquely. You *find* an address by looking in a map directory, and then on the map. You find things on the Internet using a search engine, and the second-order derivatives.
Let me start by saying that I believe that the trends in the DNS have been going the wrong way for well over a decade. The insistence on the part of many that the namespace be flattened is just a poor choice. People are now used to trying "<foo>.com" to reach a company. In some cases, this makes fair sense; I can see why "ibm.com" or "seagate.com" are that way, even though in some cases there are namespace collisions with other trademarks.
"Famous trademarks".
In others, it's ridiculous - why the heck do I get someplace in California when I go to "martyspizza.com", rather than our local very excellent pizza place? (sadly this example is less effective now, they managed to get "martyspizza.net" a few years back).
Sure. Local collisions are inevitable. Blocker Transfer, a local moving company client of mine, wanted to register a domain back in 1997... when the company was 99 years old. blocker.com was taken. They took blocker100.com, and promoted it.
We never had any business allowing small, local businesses to register in .com, or non-networking companies to register in .net, or non-organizations in .org... but a whole generation of Internet "professionals" "knew better" and the end result at the end of the road is that DNS will end up being almost as useless as IPv4 numbers for identifying the more obscure bits of the Internet.
Correct; this is exactly the problem. But a lot of it stems, Joe, from the misconception you led with.
It would have been much better for us to fix some of the obvious problems with DNS back in the day. Instead, we didn't bother, and instead allowed "market forces" to dictate what happened next. This of course got buyers whatever they wanted (which was generally "short names!"), but what buyers wanted didn't necessarily map well into what would have made sense for /users/ of the system, which would have been "predictability of names."
See all the debates about area code overlays vs splits, and the extension of US telephone Directory Numbers to 12 digits.
We are now reaping the evolution of that into even further mayhem.
Yep.
I look forward to many more years of having to remember that Marty's Pizza is "martyspizza.net" instead of "martyspizza.brookfield.wi.us", that Milwaukee's Department of Public Works is at "mpw.net" instead of "dpw.ci.milwaukee.wi.us", etc.
I am, in turn, very pleased with a lot of my local municipalities. Some of them, admittedly, *have* silly pinellascounty.org or pinellas-park.com names, but they also answer to the long-form .fl.us names you would prefer. Sometimes they redirect one way, sometimes the other; sometimes each domain merely overlays the other. But at least they are, as you say, deterministic. I don't think it's fixable anymore, either. But I remain determined to spit into the wind, Jim notwithstanding. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com '87 e24 St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274 Those who cast the vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything. -- (Joseph Stalin)
On Sat, Jun 28, 2008 at 08:46:33AM -0500, Joe Greco wrote:
Yes. It completely marginalizes the remaining positive qualities of the Domain Name System as a way to find things, in the name of giving people "more options."
The Domain Name System is not now, and never has been, away to *find* things, anymore than 123 Elm St, Worcester MA is a way to *find* a house.
It's a way to *denote* things, uniquely.
You *find* an address by looking in a map directory, and then on the map. You find things on the Internet using a search engine, and the second-order derivatives.
It seems clear that the authors of 1480 did not agree with this. This may have been because there were no "search engines", as we know them today, at that time.
Let me start by saying that I believe that the trends in the DNS have been going the wrong way for well over a decade. The insistence on the part of many that the namespace be flattened is just a poor choice. People are now used to trying "<foo>.com" to reach a company. In some cases, this makes fair sense; I can see why "ibm.com" or "seagate.com" are that way, even though in some cases there are namespace collisions with other trademarks.
"Famous trademarks".
In others, it's ridiculous - why the heck do I get someplace in California when I go to "martyspizza.com", rather than our local very excellent pizza place? (sadly this example is less effective now, they managed to get "martyspizza.net" a few years back).
Sure. Local collisions are inevitable. Blocker Transfer, a local moving company client of mine, wanted to register a domain back in 1997... when the company was 99 years old. blocker.com was taken.
They took blocker100.com, and promoted it.
That doesn't seem to be a "local collision," except insofar as the Internet can be collectively considered "local." In any case, company's solution is only useful if you already know the domain name (or have a way to find it).
We never had any business allowing small, local businesses to register in .com, or non-networking companies to register in .net, or non-organizations in .org... but a whole generation of Internet "professionals" "knew better" and the end result at the end of the road is that DNS will end up being almost as useless as IPv4 numbers for identifying the more obscure bits of the Internet.
Correct; this is exactly the problem. But a lot of it stems, Joe, from the misconception you led with.
Not a misconception. Simply a different view of how the system could have evolved, had it followed the lead of RFC1480, instead of having everyone and their brother load on in to .com... It could be said that search engines doomed any hope of trying to make the DNS sensible.
It would have been much better for us to fix some of the obvious problems with DNS back in the day. Instead, we didn't bother, and instead allowed "market forces" to dictate what happened next. This of course got buyers whatever they wanted (which was generally "short names!"), but what buyers wanted didn't necessarily map well into what would have made sense for /users/ of the system, which would have been "predictability of names."
See all the debates about area code overlays vs splits, and the extension of US telephone Directory Numbers to 12 digits.
Sure. I'm familiar.
We are now reaping the evolution of that into even further mayhem.
Yep.
I look forward to many more years of having to remember that Marty's Pizza is "martyspizza.net" instead of "martyspizza.brookfield.wi.us", that Milwaukee's Department of Public Works is at "mpw.net" instead of "dpw.ci.milwaukee.wi.us", etc.
I am, in turn, very pleased with a lot of my local municipalities.
Some of them, admittedly, *have* silly pinellascounty.org or pinellas-park.com names, but they also answer to the long-form .fl.us names you would prefer. Sometimes they redirect one way, sometimes the other; sometimes each domain merely overlays the other.
That's fine, I have been wishing for DNAME support for years. Locally, in the pre-1480 days, we were "mil.wi.us", then became "milwaukee.wi.us", but only through the magic of duplicating everything between the zones, and in the more recent "delegate elsewhere" model, that means that some registrants invariably only configure one or the other, so "foo.mil.wi.us" works while "foo.milwaukee.wi.us" doesn't...
But at least they are, as you say, deterministic.
I don't think it's fixable anymore, either. But I remain determined to spit into the wind, Jim notwithstanding.
:-) ... JG -- Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net "We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN) With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.
On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 08:40:15PM -0500, Joe Greco wrote:
On Sat, Jun 28, 2008 at 08:46:33AM -0500, Joe Greco wrote:
Yes. It completely marginalizes the remaining positive qualities of the Domain Name System as a way to find things, in the name of giving people "more options."
The Domain Name System is not now, and never has been, away to *find* things, anymore than 123 Elm St, Worcester MA is a way to *find* a house.
It's a way to *denote* things, uniquely.
You *find* an address by looking in a map directory, and then on the map. You find things on the Internet using a search engine, and the second-order derivatives.
It seems clear that the authors of 1480 did not agree with this. This may have been because there were no "search engines", as we know them today, at that time.
Possibly. But the inference I draw from the fact that they only specify really deep structure for things which are municipal and related such items, is that they were trying to provide for the delegation of reputation that I allude to later.
In others, it's ridiculous - why the heck do I get someplace in California when I go to "martyspizza.com", rather than our local very excellent pizza place? (sadly this example is less effective now, they managed to get "martyspizza.net" a few years back).
Sure. Local collisions are inevitable. Blocker Transfer, a local moving company client of mine, wanted to register a domain back in 1997... when the company was 99 years old. blocker.com was taken.
They took blocker100.com, and promoted it.
That doesn't seem to be a "local collision," except insofar as the Internet can be collectively considered "local." In any case, company's solution is only useful if you already know the domain name (or have a way to find it).
Which is true of *anyone's* domain name in the DNS as we currently know it. But it could just as easily have been true here: if I was Westshore Pizza (a local chain with 26 stores in about 15 cities), would people look for -- well, I'll expand it to the top level that's pertinent -- westshorepizza.pinellas.fl.us or westshorepizza.hillsborough.fl.us or both? Trying to shoehorn geography into the DNS *too deeply* works only for things which are unique and not ever moving, like city and county governments and agencies and schools. I don't think it's necessarily reasonable to assume that the authors of 1480 intended that scheme to be applicable generally to all domains. We can't ask Jon, but I have carboned Ann Cooper; perhaps she'll have some interesting input to put in. :-)
We never had any business allowing small, local businesses to register in .com, or non-networking companies to register in .net, or non-organizations in .org... but a whole generation of Internet "professionals" "knew better" and the end result at the end of the road is that DNS will end up being almost as useless as IPv4 numbers for identifying the more obscure bits of the Internet.
Correct; this is exactly the problem. But a lot of it stems, Joe, from the misconception you led with.
Not a misconception. Simply a different view of how the system could have evolved, had it followed the lead of RFC1480, instead of having everyone and their brother load on in to .com...
It could be said that search engines doomed any hope of trying to make the DNS sensible.
Perhaps. But I've been on the net almost as long as DNS: got my first Usenet account in 1983 and still remember the day I stopped being able to read the entire feed. (Well, the entire feed SPJC got over our 1200 baud modem that ran continuously. :-) I think that DNS started to break well before Alta Vista showed up.
I look forward to many more years of having to remember that Marty's Pizza is "martyspizza.net" instead of "martyspizza.brookfield.wi.us", that Milwaukee's Department of Public Works is at "mpw.net" instead of "dpw.ci.milwaukee.wi.us", etc.
I am, in turn, very pleased with a lot of my local municipalities.
Some of them, admittedly, *have* silly pinellascounty.org or pinellas-park.com names, but they also answer to the long-form .fl.us names you would prefer. Sometimes they redirect one way, sometimes the other; sometimes each domain merely overlays the other.
That's fine, I have been wishing for DNAME support for years. Locally, in the pre-1480 days, we were "mil.wi.us", then became "milwaukee.wi.us", but only through the magic of duplicating everything between the zones, and in the more recent "delegate elsewhere" model, that means that some registrants invariably only configure one or the other, so "foo.mil.wi.us" works while "foo.milwaukee.wi.us" doesn't...
In fact, the Hillsborough County Sheriff's office has hcso.hillsborough.fl.us on the back of the cars, bless them. That's a really *strong-minded* IT director; I ought to find him and shake his hand. Do we have RFC 1480-Champion badges somewhere?
But at least they are, as you say, deterministic.
I don't think it's fixable anymore, either. But I remain determined to spit into the wind, Jim notwithstanding.
:-)
I decline to mess with the old Lone Ranger, though. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com '87 e24 St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274 Those who cast the vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything. -- (Joseph Stalin)
In article <20080630212216.GJ8195@cgi.jachomes.com>, Jay R. Ashworth <jra@baylink.com> writes
The Domain Name System is not now, and never has been, away to *find* things, anymore than 123 Elm St, Worcester MA is a way to *find* a house.
What about "1 Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA" ? -- Roland Perry
On Tue, Jul 01, 2008 at 12:04:57PM +0100, Roland Perry wrote:
In article <20080630212216.GJ8195@cgi.jachomes.com>, Jay R. Ashworth <jra@baylink.com> writes
The Domain Name System is not now, and never has been, away to *find* things, anymore than 123 Elm St, Worcester MA is a way to *find* a house.
What about "1 Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA" ?
Or 1 Tech Data Drive, Largo, or 1 Infinite Loop; yeah, there are lots of good examples of why addresses are random and shouldn't be used to *locate* things... except as keys into directories. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com '87 e24 St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274 Those who cast the vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything. -- (Joseph Stalin)
Shouldn't we take all the ICANNt and DNS Related stuff to dns-operations? -----Original Message----- From: Jay R. Ashworth [mailto:jra@baylink.com] Sent: Tuesday, July 01, 2008 11:48 AM To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: what problem are we solving? (was Re: ICANN opens upPandora's Box of On Tue, Jul 01, 2008 at 12:04:57PM +0100, Roland Perry wrote:
In article <20080630212216.GJ8195@cgi.jachomes.com>, Jay R. Ashworth <jra@baylink.com> writes
The Domain Name System is not now, and never has been, away to *find*
things, anymore than 123 Elm St, Worcester MA is a way to *find* a house.
What about "1 Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA" ?
Or 1 Tech Data Drive, Largo, or 1 Infinite Loop; yeah, there are lots of good examples of why addresses are random and shouldn't be used to *locate* things... except as keys into directories. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com '87 e24 St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274 Those who cast the vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything. -- (Joseph Stalin) No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG. Version: 8.0.101 / Virus Database: 270.4.3/1528 - Release Date: 7/1/2008 7:26 AM
On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 10:24:48AM -0700, Scott Francis <darkuncle@gmail.com> wrote a message of 32 lines which said:
what problem is ICANN trying to solve with this proposal? What about the current system that's broken, does this new system fix?
ICANN is simply responding to demand. Some people want to create a TLD. The existence of a TLD is not a problem for the other TLDs. If the new TLD is stupid or useless (like ".aero" or ".pro"), it will fail. So what? That's the normal life of projects. Why ICANN should evaluate the new TLD applications, apart from some simple technical checks? If something is wanted and causes no harm for the others, then why in hell ICANN should refuse it? I did not suspect that the idea of central regulation of business, with a state-like committee examining business ideas and allowing them or not, was an idea so popular among Nanog members :-)
participants (33)
-
Bill Nash -
bmanning＠vacation.karoshi.com -
David Conrad -
David Schwartz -
Eric Brunner-Williams -
Frank Bulk - iNAME -
Gadi Evron -
James Hess -
Jay R. Ashworth -
Jean-François Mezei -
Jim Popovitch -
Joe Abley -
Joe Greco -
John Levine -
Laurence F. Sheldon, Jr. -
Marshall Eubanks -
Martin Hannigan -
Matthew Huff -
michael.dillon＠bt.com -
Paul Wall -
Peter Beckman -
Phil Regnauld -
Randy Bush -
Rich Kulawiec -
Rob Pickering -
Roland Perry -
Scott Francis -
Stephane Bortzmeyer -
Tomas L. Byrnes -
Tony Finch -
Tuc at T-B-O-H.NET -
Valdis.Kletnieks＠vt.edu -
WWWhatsup