Thus spake "Alain Hebert" <ahebert@pubnix.net>

Why?

If we can coral them in it and legislate to have no porn anywhere else than on .xxx ... should fix the issue for the prudes out there.

And exactly which legislature has the authority to prevent porn sites registering in any other gTLD/ccTLD? S Stephen Sprunk "Stupid people surround themselves with smart CCIE #3723 people. Smart people surround themselves with K5SSS smart people who disagree with them." --Aaron Sorkin

On Thu, 11 May 2006 Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:

On Thu, 11 May 2006 13:40:22 EDT, Alain Hebert said:

...

If we can coral them in it and legislate to have no porn anywhere else than on .xxx ... should fix the issue for the prudes out there.

The problem is that it's a TLD, not .xxx.us. What standard of "porn" do you intend to enforce? Remember there's places that have Internet where females are still supposed to keep their faces covered in public.

Besides which, "if we can corral them in it" looks like a very implausible concept.

RFC3675.

Absolutly. I don't see how existing sites are ever going to accept having to move to address in particular domain (and pay 100x extra for it) or that there is any good way to force such rules across entire globe. That .xxx always seemed to me to be heavily ICANN-politics motivated with benefits primarily to those running new registry. Good that they finally come around to kill this thing. Although the bad thing is that some will make a case that it happened because USG told them to do so and as such push to replace ICANN with something that answers to ITU. Anyway, this is getting way OT for this list... -- William Leibzon Elan Networks william@elan.net

David Schwartz wrote:

The major problem with this is that many other governments have "dangerous ideas" that they'd also like to be easily able to identify and isolate as well. If the United States gets to corral porn, why can't China corral Democracy? Why can't Russia corral advocates of "terrorism" (which some might consider independence).

I think it would be an incredibly short-sighted policy on the part of the U.S. government to restrict the Internet in the hopes of controlling things like gambling and pornography. The precedent of government isolating "dangerous ideas" will be adopted by many other governments and we will have no sound ideological grounds to oppose.

Excellent points. I question then why we even have a need for any TLDs. Why not just plain ole hostnames like nanog, www.nanog, mail.nanog. This would make life soooooo much easier for many many companies that are legally forced to have to register every freaking TLD in their name just to protect IP etc. I would imagine that the US Govt would back this proposal simply because of the problems with a particular TLD for www.whitehouse. For the sake of discussion, please don't branch into an argument about scalability. ;-) -Jim P.

Fred Baker wrote:

On May 11, 2006, at 8:42 PM, Jim Popovitch wrote:

...

Why not just plain ole hostnames like nanog, www.nanog, mail.nanog

For the same reason DNS was created in the first place. You will recall that we actually HAD a hostname file that we traded around...

Let's not go backwards now.... ;-) Note: I didn't advocate replacing DNS with host files. I'll attempt to clarify: If X number of DNS servers can server Y number of TLDs, why can't X number of completely re-designed DNS servers handle just root domain names without a TLD. Examples: www.microsoft smtp.microsoft www.google www.yahoo mail.yahoo Why have a TLD when for most of the world: www.cnn.CO.UK is forwarded to www.cnn.COM www.microsoft.NET is forwarded to www.microsoft.COM www.google.NET is forwarded to www.google.COM etc., etc. There are very few arguments that I've heard for even having TLDs in the first place. The most common one was "Businesses will use .COM, Networks will use .NET, Organizations and Garden Clubs will use .ORG". When in reality Businesses scoop up all the TLDs in their name/interest. Why does it matter if your routers and switches are in DNS as 123.company.NET vrs 123.routers.company I do understand that today's DNS system was designed with TLDs in mind, and probably couldn't just switch over night. But why can't a next-gen system be put in place that puts www.microsoft and www.google right where they go now whether you use .net, .com, .org, or probably any other TLD? -Jim P.

On May 11, 2006, at 11:28 PM, Martin Hannigan wrote:

Im having an offline discussion with a list member and I'll ask, why does it matter if you have a domain name if a directory can hold everything you need to know about them via key words and ip-addrs, NAT's and all?

It's all about authority, literally and figuratively. Google might be a good search engine, but I don't control google like I control my zones. Being that google is evil now, I don't think I want to give them authority for my zones. ;) -David

Fred Baker wrote:

Now, as to ccTLDs vs gTLDs, if anyone wants to eliminate one or the other they get my vote.

The political reality is that ccTLDs will never go away. The business reality is that gTLDs (at least the majority of the ones we have now) will never go away. So, can we move on to something *slightly* less pointless, like moving .gov and .mil under .us where they belong? :) Doug -- If you're never wrong, you're not trying hard enough

Why have a TLD when for most of the world:

www.cnn.CO.UK is forwarded to www.cnn.COM

www.microsoft.NET is forwarded to www.microsoft.COM

www.google.NET is forwarded to www.google.COM

Not all organizations simply FORWARD sites. At different times I have used www.google.com, www.google.co.uk, www.google.ca, www.google.ru, www.google.de, and www.google.com.au They are different because I can select different subsets of the total database to search. www.apple.ca does forward, but not as you think. Try it right now, look at the price of that MacBook Pro and then see what your Apple Store sells it for. In the past, some ISPs have use .net for internal email addresses and .com for customers of their mail services. Whether or not it is COMMON for organizations to make distinctions based on TLDs, some have clearly done so and I don't see why we should subtract that capability. Many of the new TLDs that are in operation, and that are being proposed, are primarily MARKETING EXERCISES. Let me ask you, does the world need a new way for pornography to be marketed? When .COM, .EDU, .NET and .ORG were invented, they had a purpose other than as marketing exercises. If only we could get some serious support for new TLDs that make some kind of sense, other than as marketing opportunities for the small number of people in the registry and registrar business. --Michael Dillon

Steve Gibbard wrote:

Note that there are a lot more TLDs than just .COM, .NET, .ORG, etc. The vast majority of them are geographical rather than divided based on organizational function. For large portions of the world, the local TLD allows domain holders to get a domain paid for in local currency, for a price that's locally affordable, with local DNS servers for the TLD. For gTLDs they'd have to pay in US dollars, at prices that are set for Americans, and have them served far away on the other ends of expensive and flaky International transit connections.

Elimination of TLDs would in no way mandate that people register domains from one global entity. Today we have multiple entities registering domains back to multiple authorities, why not just have one authority and allow for multiple regional registrars. TLDs just add confusion to everything, and add complexity to the back-end. Perhaps there is a better list to move this discussion to, if someone would point me in that direction I would be glad to check it out. -Jim P.

On May 12, 2006 at 14:51 tv@pobox.com (Todd Vierling) wrote:

The complexity added by TLDs has one extremely critical good side effect: distribution of load by explicitly avoiding a flat entity namespace. The DNS has a hierarchical namespace for a reason, and arguments to the contrary will convince on the order of sqrt(-1) people.

As if you couldn't just hash on whatever the last component is and pick a server on that basis? Query(server[Sum(bytes) mod Nservers])? There are probably good answers to people's suggestions for change but working backwards from "that's the way we've always done it" with trailing remarks intended to stifle a response isn't, to my mind, an answer. The best answer I can think of off-hand is that dropping .com etc wouldn't add much, if anything. Any savings in typing would be off-set by having to generate non-colliding names which would've been .com and .org, etc. It would just be creating a new TLD, the null TLD moving collision avoidance left by one. As to .XXX: To my mind the real camel's nose in the tent is that to create it would seem to urge or at least validate its enforcement and coercive means would necessarily arise (civil lawsuits, criminal charges, regulatory apparatus.) Otherwise of what use would it be, in terms of the conceptions of its champions as opposed to unintended consequences? The deeper problem is the conception by many (unwashed) that someone must be in charge, we used to get calls asking for contact info for the Internet complaint dept, and they didn't mean us. People were often shocked to hear that we had no answer. And widespread conceptions like that have a way of materializing, sans some force of resistance. I suppose some may say it's 10 years too late for that comment. -- -Barry Shein The World | bzs@TheWorld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 800-THE-WRLD | Login: Nationwide Software Tool & Die | Public Access Internet | SINCE 1989 *oo*

On May 12, 2006 at 18:12 tv@pobox.com (Todd Vierling) wrote:

On 5/12/06, Barry Shein <bzs@world.std.com> wrote:

...

On May 12, 2006 at 14:51 tv@pobox.com (Todd Vierling) wrote:

...

The complexity added by TLDs has one extremely critical good side effect: distribution of load by explicitly avoiding a flat entity namespace. The DNS has a hierarchical namespace for a reason, and arguments to the contrary will convince on the order of sqrt(-1) people.

As if you couldn't just hash on whatever the last component is and pick a server on that basis? Query(server[Sum(bytes) mod Nservers])?

There are probably good answers to people's suggestions for change but working backwards from "that's the way we've always done it"

If you bothered to read the 1983 RFCs I mentioned, and others related to machine naming, you'd realize that the DNS of today is not, in fact, "the way we've always done it."

I've been on the net since 1977, nearly 30 years. I participated in the public discussions which led to the current DNS system. I managed Boston University's campus-wide internet environment when the DNS system was implemented ca 1984-5. When my group connected BU to the internet the host table was still in use. Hunt down "BU joins the internet", a typo in our initial update tickled a bug in the bsd hosttable program which brought down about 2/3 of the internet (yes, down.) I can't say I'm proud of that, but it's kind of hard to forget.

The namespace *was* flat, once. That didn't scale, and not just because of technical limitations -- the fact that there are only so many useful combinations of 26 letters in a relatively short name had some weight in there too. So hierarchical naming was standardized (some forms of nonstandard hierarchy existed before then), and it's unlikely we're going back anytime in the foreseeable future.

But there's no technical advantage of a hierarchical system over a simple hashing scheme, they're basically isomorphic other than a hash system can more easily be tuned to a particular distribution goal. There might be political or sociological or managerial advantages, but spreading out requests in a reasonably balanced manner among more than one server is a fairly simple technical problem. So that alone is not really a showstopper. I don't dispute the practical, non-technical issues.

Changing *how* the names are structured into a different hierarchy of organization, I could believe. Changing the fact that they are structured back to being unstructured... the ship has already sailed.

So your argument is that it shouldn't be considered because that's not the way it is. At any rate, as I said in my note I'm not advocating this, I'm just pointing out that some of the arguments against it have been rather shallow, claiming it wasn't technically practical or that's not the way it's been done so that's not the way it will be done. There's no particular technical reason not to flatten the namespace, particularly 30 years later with modern hardware where the compute cost of hashing vs strrchr(host,'.') wouldn't be as much of an issue. There are practical, non-technical issues. My understanding wasn't that the suggestion was to eliminate all hierarchy, only to eliminate the manor TLDs (.com, .net, .org), I believe the example was something like lists.nanog rather than lists.nanog.org. -- -Barry Shein The World | bzs@TheWorld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 800-THE-WRLD | Login: Nationwide Software Tool & Die | Public Access Internet | SINCE 1989 *oo*

On Friday 12 May 2006 23:47, Barry Shein wrote:

...

The namespace *was* flat, once. That didn't scale, and not just because of technical limitations -- the fact that there are only so many useful combinations of 26 letters in a relatively short name had some weight in there too.

Fortunately unicode has rather more than 26 letters, even the DNS allows rathers more than 26, except for the first character of a hostname.

...

So hierarchical naming was standardized (some forms of nonstandard hierarchy existed before then), and it's unlikely we're going back anytime in the foreseeable future.

But there's no technical advantage of a hierarchical system over a simple hashing scheme, they're basically isomorphic other than a hash system can more easily be tuned to a particular distribution goal.

Amazing how many experienced people seem to be saying this isn't possible, given there are already schemes out there using flat namespaces for large problems (e.g. Skype, freenet, various file sharing systems). Most of these are also far more dynamic than the DNS in nature, and most have no management overhead with them, you run the software and the namespace "just works". I looked at a couple of these, and sneezed out a new system for a friend in a couple of hours, when he needed one, without great effort, the main thing was to avoid known pitfalls. So far it seems to work. However I think the pain in DNS for most people is the hierarchy, but the diverse registration systems. i.e. It isn't that it is delegated, it is that delegates all "do their own thing". I've always pondered doing a flat, simple part of the DNS, or even an overlay, but of course it needs a business model of sorts. The main motivation was security, as currently the DNS model lacks PKI, and it doesn't look as if any amount of reworking the existing protocols is going to provide a suitable security framework soon, unless you count HTTPS/SSL and that still doesn't handle virtual hosting, and adds yet more management overhead in a hierarchical trust model. I wouldn't have fancied doing any of these things when the DNS was conceived, but both hardware and software have moved on enormously. Eventually these technologies will be replaced, and if it isn't done in an open and shared manner, the technologies will be replaced by proprietary systems.

Michael.Dillon@btradianz.com wrote:

...

...

But there's no technical advantage of a hierarchical system over a simple hashing scheme, they're basically isomorphic other than a hash system can more easily be tuned to a particular distribution goal.

Amazing how many experienced people seem to be saying this isn't

possible,

...

given there are already schemes out there using flat namespaces for

large

...

problems (e.g. Skype, freenet, various file sharing systems). Most of

these

...

are also far more dynamic than the DNS in nature, and most have no

management

...

overhead with them, you run the software and the namespace "just works".

djbdns with its hashing technique could do that but Bind 9 would break. There is still the problem wich single point would manage that database.

According to your description, this is a hierarchical naming system. At the top level you have Skype, freenet, etc. defining separate namespaces. Because DNS was intended to be a universal naming system, it had to incorporate the hierarchy into the system.

...

However I think the pain in DNS for most people is the hierarchy, but

the

...

diverse registration systems. i.e. It isn't that it is delegated, it is

that

...

delegates all "do their own thing".

Seems to me that this is part of the definition of "delegate". Some would say that this makes for a more robust system than a monolithic hierarchy where everyone has to toe the party line.

...

I've always pondered doing a flat, simple part of the DNS, or even an overlay, but of course it needs a business model of sorts.

It has been tried at least twice and failed. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/05/13/realnames_goes_titsup_com/ http://www.idcommons.net

--Michael Dillon

It seems to work now. Just google for Apple: Rendezvous and Bonjour There are libs for linux and Microsoft too. Both Rendezvous and Bonjour are working. There is an incompatible version from Microsoft too, some say it is vaporware but I can still their queries for '.local' on our nameservers. Cheers Peter and Karin Dambier -- Peter and Karin Dambier The Public-Root Consortium Graeffstrasse 14 D-64646 Heppenheim +49(6252)671-788 (Telekom) +49(179)108-3978 (O2 Genion) +49(6252)750-308 (VoIP: sipgate.de) mail: peter@peter-dambier.de mail: peter@echnaton.serveftp.com http://iason.site.voila.fr/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/iason/

Steve Gibbard wrote: ...

Note that there are a lot more TLDs than just .COM, .NET, .ORG, etc. The vast majority of them are geographical rather than divided based on organizational function. For large portions of the world, the local TLD allows domain holders to get a domain paid for in local currency, for a price that's locally affordable, with local DNS servers for the TLD. For gTLDs they'd have to pay in US dollars, at prices that are set for Americans, and have them served far away on the other ends of expensive and flaky International transit connections.

-Steve

The problem with ccTLDs is the same as with telefone numbers. You lose them as soon as you move. Maybe that is not a problem in north america, but in europe it is. You must live in a country to be allowed to register and keep a domain there. Peter and Karin -- Peter and Karin Dambier The Public-Root Consortium Graeffstrasse 14 D-64646 Heppenheim +49(6252)671-788 (Telekom) +49(179)108-3978 (O2 Genion) +49(6252)750-308 (VoIP: sipgate.de) mail: peter@peter-dambier.de mail: peter@echnaton.serveftp.com http://iason.site.voila.fr/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/iason/

At 11:42 PM 5/11/2006, Jim Popovitch wrote:

David Schwartz wrote:

...

The major problem with this is that many other governments have "dangerous ideas" that they'd also like to be easily able to identify and isolate as well. If the United States gets to corral porn, why can't China corral Democracy? Why can't Russia corral advocates of "terrorism" (which some might consider independence). I think it would be an incredibly short-sighted policy on the part of the U.S. government to restrict the Internet in the hopes of controlling things like gambling and pornography. The precedent of government isolating "dangerous ideas" will be adopted by many other governments and we will have no sound ideological grounds to oppose.

Excellent points.

I question then why we even have a need for any TLDs.

Why do we even need domain names at all outside our own entities for network management, mail,and a few minor services now that we have google? -M< -- Martin Hannigan (c) 617-388-2663 Renesys Corporation (w) 617-395-8574 Member of Technical Staff Network Operations hannigan@renesys.com

Colin Johnston wrote:

Hi folks, Quick security tracing question, flame me if you think offnetwork topic.

Earlier this month my daughters Ibook was stolen, oh well that is life I guess. Anyway updated mail server software for full debug and IP log since noticed that mail account was accessed yesterday. I am now hoping it is access'd again, system was setup to pull each min so when they(thugs) access internet again hopefully will honeytrap IP number. What does one do next ? I guess inform police etc but would this be too slow ?? Do I contact ARIN/RIPE contacts direct ??

I know about software that should have been installed for tracing if stolen but wondered about in the real network world how useful this was and if any items recovered ??

Colin Johnston Satsig sysadmin

Apple have their own good ideas. Besides a VoIP phone software or something like no-ip.com is good to permanently know what ip-address the toy has. Knowing the ip you can traceroute to guess what continent, state, province it is, via its final router. The police and the owner of the final router should do the rest. Bad idea :) have some child porn on the box and mail it to the police. They will trace it very fast. -- Peter and Karin Dambier Cesidian Root - Radice Cesidiana Graeffstrasse 14 D-64646 Heppenheim +49(6252)671-788 (Telekom) +49(179)108-3978 (O2 Genion) +49(6252)750-308 (VoIP: sipgate.de) mail: peter@peter-dambier.de mail: peter@echnaton.serveftp.com http://iason.site.voila.fr/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/iason/

On 12-May-2006, at 01:17, Martin Hannigan wrote:

At 2:43 PM -0400 05:11:2006, Eric Brunner-Williams wrote:

...

the how-to-label problem has been around since the w3c's pics effort.

the jurisdictional issue is aterritorial,

Negative. 92% of the root is under US jurisdiction

How are you measuring the root, for the purposes of that assertion? Joe

Aside from all of the technical aspects that would make having a .xxx tld difficult at best, you have to take into account the moral aspects. If all of the "adult" sites were to switch to the .xxx format, it would make it extremely easy (as if it isn't right now) for minors to locate and access websites that they shouldn't be allowed to view. Instead of having to google for "porn", all they'd have to do is type: favoritepornhere.xxx and shabaaam! there they go. Just my 2 cents. Gregory Taylor greg@xwb.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "Eric Brunner-Williams" <brunner@nic-naa.net> To: <nanog@nanog.org> Cc: "william(at)elan.net" <william@elan.net>; <brunner@nic-naa.net> Sent: Friday, May 12, 2006 6:20 AM Subject: Re: MEDIA: ICANN rejects .xxx domain

earlier i wrote:

...

the how-to-label problem has been around since the w3c's pics effort.

the jurisdictional issue is aterritorial, as the cctlds cover that, and the authority, nominally, is a 501(c)(3) in marina del rey, and, purely contractual, as is the registry restricted to cooperative entities and the registry restricted to aviation entities.

this drew a response from martin hannigan:

: Negative. 92% of the root is under US jurisdiction with most ccTLD's : riding on that infrastructure. I'm in the process of analyzing that : now. I'll let you know what the number comes out to, but I bet it's : close.

having been a party to the drafting of the icann new gtld contracts, an interested party in the case of the neu* .biz contract, and an invited, if ad hoc, expert in the case of the aero/coop/museum contracts, mostly at louis touton's initiative, i'm of the (ianal) opinion that other than the easily answered california incorporated 501(c)(3) jurisdictional question implicit in the contracts between icann and the new gtld sponsors, that no jurisdictional restrictions were specified in the ngtld contracts.

some actual lawyer may comment on the distinction between statutory authority over the conduct of parties to a private contract, and the civil law jurisdiction the parties agree to to resolve contractual disputes.

there are parties that hold a territorial jurisdiction trumps all point of view. the us doc placed territorial jurisdiction (physical location) requirements in the .us rfp, which i also wrote the winning response to, so all .us nameservers are within the continental united states.

personally i view this requirement as brain-dead.

similarly, icann last summer adopted a contested redelegation process for cctlds which values territorial jurisdiction claims.

personally i view this process change as brain-dead.

obviously, milage varries.

now the issue of controlling authority has come up previously, and the claim that there is only one jurisdiction, the us, has also been made previously.

see the w3c's p3p standard, and the data collection (aka "privacy) policy regimes we (i'm wearing that co-author hat now) provided mechanism for.

again, ymmv. eric

On May 12, 2006, at 3:26 PM, John Palmer (NANOG Acct) wrote:

What are they talking about? .XXX already exists:

No it doesn't, see below: dig ns xxx @g.LookMaICanAlsoSplinterTheNameSpace.com ; <<>> DiG 9.2.1 <<>> ns xxx @10.24.0.7 ;; global options: printcmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 3245 ;; flags: qr aa rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 0 ;; QUESTION SECTION: ;xxx. IN NS ;; AUTHORITY SECTION: . 86400 IN SOA Kook.LookMaICanAlsoSplinterTheNameSpace.com ;; Query time: 4 msec ;; SERVER: g.LookMaICanAlsoSplinterTheNameSpace.com#53(192.0.2.1) ;; WHEN: Fri May 12 15:34:17 2006 ;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 96 And this is exactly why there should be only 1 namespace..... W

%dig ns xxx @g.public-root.com

; <<>> DiG 9.3.2 <<>> ns xxx @g.public-root.com ; (1 server found) ;; global options: printcmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 65 ;; flags: qr rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 2, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; QUESTION SECTION: ;xxx. IN NS

;; AUTHORITY SECTION: xxx. 172800 IN NS eugene.kashpureff.org. xxx. 172800 IN NS ga.dnspros.net.

;; ADDITIONAL SECTION: ga.dnspros.net. 172800 IN A 64.27.14.2

;; Query time: 2 msec ;; SERVER: 199.5.157.131#53(199.5.157.131) ;; WHEN: Fri May 12 18:12:48 2006 ;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 100

Oh, sorry - you mean in the restricted USG root where ICANN actually has to approve new TLDs rather than just doing the technical coordination (the ONLY thing they were tasked to do in the first place).

Freedom/Free Market Score: Inclusive Namespace: INFINITY, ICANN: ZERO

Life is a concentration camp. You're stuck here and there's no way out and you can only rage impotently against your persecutors. -- Woody Allen

On Fri, 12 May 2006, John Palmer (NANOG Acct) wrote:

What are they talking about? .XXX already exists:

%dig ns xxx @g.public-root.com

;; AUTHORITY SECTION: xxx. 172800 IN NS eugene.kashpureff.org.

omg that is is super internet lols. seriously, best ns evar. thx for the giggles. --matt@snark.net------------------------------------------<darwin>< Moral indignation is a technique to endow the idiot with dignity. - Marshall McLuhan

On May 11, 2006, at 3:48 PM, Peter Dambier wrote:

So ICANN did come to their senses finally and prevented another collission in balkan namespace :)

Thankyou ICANN for your continued support of alternative roots.

If you think *that's* why .XXX died, then I have a small bridge to sell you providing access to Manhattan island. Cheers, D -- Derek J. Balling Systems Administrator Vassar College 124 Raymond Ave Box 13 - Computer Center 217 Poughkeepsie, NY 12604 (845) 437-7231

On 5/11/06, Derek J. Balling <deballing@vassar.edu> wrote:

...

If you think *that's* why .XXX died, then I have a small bridge to sell you providing access to Manhattan island.

Derek, I could use your little bridge for our garden, but I am afraid I cannot pay for it :) Todd Vierling wrote:

I'll offer you advice once offered to me. Read the sign on the padded cell: "Do not feed the troll."

Todd you got it. Sorry I could not resist such a fat chance.

Peter's about 51 cards shy of a full deck when it comes to TLDs. I still have a back-of-my-head suspicion that he's a new alter ago of Jim Fleming. <g>

Participating in some of the alternatives I am intersted in what becomes of The Root and what becomes of DNS. I am working together with Joe Baptista on the IASON project. http://iason.site.voila.fr/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/iason/ I like some of Jim's ideas, but I never succeded to contact him :) Cheers Peter and Karin Dambier -- Peter and Karin Dambier The Public-Root Consortium Graeffstrasse 14 D-64646 Heppenheim +49(6252)671-788 (Telekom) +49(179)108-3978 (O2 Genion) +49(6252)750-308 (VoIP: sipgate.de) mail: peter@peter-dambier.de mail: peter@echnaton.serveftp.com http://iason.site.voila.fr/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/iason/