Re: new.net: yet another dns namespace overlay play
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- So the short answer minus the marketing-speak is that new.net is offering domains in new TLDs without having them in *.root-servers.net. The idea isn't new; people have been doing this for years with limited success. As domains in the new TLDs are obviously only useful if people can reach them, new.net is offering a variety of ways to be able to resolve them. Anyone in control of a recursive nameserver can: - - Slave a root zone with the new TLDs appended. - - Add stubs for the new TLDs pointing at udns[12].newdotnet.net. (I'm pleased with the UltraDNS infrastructure, which is serving similarly here to the gtld-servers.net but for new.net's TLDs. For those using the stub-zone hack, these are the only servers they ever see.) - - Replace the root cache with one pointing to ns[123].newdotnet.net, which will delegate as appropriate to the various TLD servers. (There are obviously too few of these available with not enough diversity, but more will be added soon.) The "launch partners" are listed as Earthlink, Excite@Home, NetZero. These shortly will be using one of the above to allow their users to reach the new TLDs. Given that the whole goal is for the domains to be resolvable, expect to see more. But these options aren't available to the average end user. Rather than setting up a few centralized recursive nameservers and trying to get every desktop in the world to send their traffic to them, new.net has elected to also make the domains reachable with ".new.net" appended. This allows for proper local caching and search-path related tricks. For all desktop users, the option is available to just add new.net to the search path. One of the functions of the Windows client offered on the site is a resolver plugin that appends ".new.net" on to some queries. It tries to cut down on the number of failed DNS requests that just would be generated by just adding new.net to the search path. It will also act as a sub-proxy for proxy users, appending ".new.net" on to some HTTP proxy requests. I'm not sure whats going on with a patent application on this. This is obviously less clean than just having ICANN list new TLDs. But given the ongoing frustration with ICANN, there is significant interest in a different approach, and new.net is taking one. I'm pretty sure that I didn't want it to come to this, and I'm not entirely convinced that anyone should be doing it. But personal reservations aside, its happening. And I intend to see that its done as well as possible. Aaron Hopkins Systems Engineer, idealab! Acting VP of Engineering, new.net -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.4 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iQCVAwUBOqXvPEfJWHAEvsjBAQFgAQQAmtREC7ZCYLVrA2biCzriM1z07Jrk7oAc fG9znSGC7gtHrcsad2N7SR+wFsWP2v8I546zYMvpcfHDClRFyS11tohi85W/CfEQ 9kaWfe01Jzqri37v+jHfAyX7k7OrSz+9wRJoh72rTItMWgaLECA1wync//EJ7EYc o+zS2KTe2P4= =kJXu -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
On Wed, Mar 07, 2001 at 12:20:09AM -0800, Aaron Hopkins wrote:
So the short answer minus the marketing-speak is that new.net is offering domains in new TLDs without having them in *.root-servers.net. The idea isn't new; people have been doing this for years with limited success. [...] The "launch partners" are listed as Earthlink, Excite@Home, NetZero.
NetZero is an idealab! Capital Partner, so I'm not terribly surprised there. EarthLink and Excite@Home are big and well-respected names, and surely do carry _some_ weight as to setting precedents. But these organizations do not the internet make, and the success of new.net's new TLD's is dependent upon widespread adaptation. What incentive -- operational, financial, and otherwise -- is there for other providers to follow suit? What differentiates new.net from other people who might want to utilize similar tactics for TLD's of their own? And what happens when there's TLD overlap between you and other alternate registrars? Clearly some sort of authority structure, be it ICANN or something idealab!-created to "compete" with ICANN, is needed. I'm sure Dr. Joe Baptista and Roeland Meyer would like it if the global Internet could resolve .god domains, and certainly Jim Phlemming has a TLD up his sleeves to be used in conjunction with IPv8 rollout... ;)
This is obviously less clean than just having ICANN list new TLDs. But given the ongoing frustration with ICANN, there is significant interest in a different approach, and new.net is taking one.
I agree, ICANN (or is ICan't more appropriate?) is a very broken organization, and I wholeheartedly appreciate the efforts made by you and others to circumvent them through innovation such as this. Still, they're the folks most(?) Internet operators recognize as being in charge, and until that changes, I question the usefulness of alternate root servers. -adam
I'm pretty sure that I didn't want it to come to this, and I'm not entirely convinced that anyone should be doing it. But personal reservations aside, its happening. And I intend to see that its done as well as possible.
Then why did you and David ignore my plea to cooperate with the extant TLD managers, with whom the new.net TLDs now collide? You could have launched the new.net TLDs with a bunch of in-place registrants already hosting sites under the TLDs you have collided with. You could have built a shared registration system that could have encompassed all the non-ICANN TLDs, and helped create something that would have really given serious challenge to ICANN. But instead, you chose to ignore me, and the others. Now we have a mess on our hands, for example, who is really the registrant of warren.family, the one who has held the Pacificroot warren.family for 4 years, or the one who just got warren.family from new.net on Monday? What will new.net say to their customer when one of Pacficroot's registrants sends a C&D to a new.net registrant who has collided with their SLD? Is new.net's indemnity clause sufficient to protect you from liability to your customers, after you sold them something which subsequently got the new.net customer into a lawsuit? Maybe you want to run that one by David Hernand, see what he thinks. What a can of worms you have opened. I wish you had listened to me. And no, I'm not interested in a job at new.net anymore, in case you were wondering.
Aaron Hopkins Systems Engineer, idealab! Acting VP of Engineering, new.net
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On Wed, Mar 07, 2001 at 02:51:31PM -0800, Mike Batchelor wrote:
I'm pretty sure that I didn't want it to come to this, and I'm not entirely convinced that anyone should be doing it. But personal reservations aside, its happening. And I intend to see that its done as well as possible.
Then why did you and David ignore my plea to cooperate with the extant TLD managers, with whom the new.net TLDs now collide? You could have launched the new.net TLDs with a bunch of in-place registrants already hosting sites under the TLDs you have collided with. You could have built a shared registration system that could have encompassed all the non-ICANN TLDs, and helped create something that would have really given serious challenge to ICANN. But instead, you chose to ignore me, and the others. Now we have a mess on our hands, for example, who is really the registrant of warren.family, the one who has held the Pacificroot warren.family for 4 years, or the one who just got warren.family from new.net on Monday?
But if they had done the net-friendly thing (created a partnership/coalition/whatever with existing alternate roots), that would have.. been the net-friendly thing. Sure they could have done this, instantly strengthened their position, and maybe created a serious enough force that ICANN may have felt it and reacted intelligently. As it is they're just another alternative root, albeit with more $$ than most. Will they survive? maybe. Given the fate of similar idealab! creations it's certainly not a statistical probability. ... Of course, who are we to challenge new.net, with their patent-pending technology for appending ".new.net." to hostnames, leading partnerships with exciting companies like earthlink! and they exist to a whopping 16 million users, are easily accessed by everyone else willing to fiddle with their resolver (well, not mail, sorry we need to invent a sendmail plugin for that one). Besides, nothing that ever came out of palo alto and was spun up by a "think tank" with an exclamation mark appended to their name ever went wrong, right? Last I checked guesstimates of internet users globally was something like 400 million people, ~30% were in north america, ~25% in europe, ~20% in asia/oceania, ~10% in south america. Maybe these figures seem high, but remember that only a considerable subset will be regular [ab]users. 16 million, probably an aggressive figure to start with, any way you look at it, nothing but a drop in the bucket. aaron: when you guys end up on fuckedcompany, can I get a deal on some of that nice hardware you [probably] have over there? Maybe a terabyte disk farm, or a highend server (I'll pay shipping). cheers, - wolfie. -- Brian Russo <brusso@phys.hawaii.edu> Debian/GNU Linux <wolfie@debian.org> http://www.debian.org LPSG "member" <wolfie@lpsg.org> http://www.lpsg.org -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
participants (4)
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Aaron Hopkins -
Adam Rothschild -
Brian Russo -
Mike Batchelor