As a new subscriber to this list, I am pleased to see a diversity of opinions without *flaming*. At 03:32 PM 7/22/97 -0500, Aaron Abelard wrote:

I'm sick of paying the NIC to, and in reality I think Kashpureff's hack is pretty elegant. However, I disagree that capitalism is /pure evil/. Once upon a time the net was driven by research and academia, but that day has passed. The net as it stands now is in poor shape, and a with the latest intense round of backhoe attacks and DNS problems the enormous amount of capital invested in the internet will have to be protected. This is when those capitalist companies will finally start to hash out technologies that make the internet more redundandt.

Agreed!

The problem and, I believe, the solution lies with the root name servers. Until people accept and use more than the current InterNIC root server we won't be able to announce any more domain name strategies.

Agreed! All in all, I *do* think that NSI has done a good job with their role as registrar and Root Server Operator. I even think that their recent glitch was not to be unexpected, and any registrar could have a similar glitch at some point in their future. My only issue with NSI is that they stand to benefit without ever facing any financial risk (NSF funding ==> collect fees as a government sanctioned monopoly ==> cashing out via IPO). Open the name space up to true competition (i.e. not the gTLD-MoU), and all netizens will benefit. Regards, Jay Fenello President, Iperdome, Inc. 404-250-3242 http://www.iperdome.com