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Or we could just forget ICANN et. al. and start using OpenNIC - wouldn't we all like to use the .geek TLD anyway?

So what? Screw 'em, we don't need ICANN, there are plenty of alternatives like openNIC for example.

you have some good points but there is one big differance between the taxation without representation of say, England and early America and this. One is a forced tax which you have to pay to live and not goto jail, while the other is more of a service charge then a tax(but still a tax!). This tax can't get _really_ out of hand because people won't let it. If they tried to charge an extra $500.00 for a domainname it wouldn't take long before their root servers are not used and everyone turns to another, better(?)[OpenNIC], set of rootservers. They're are other servers out there that you can use.

Taxation without representation doesn't really apply here because you are repesented as the customer. It would be like calling the price of a bigmac a tax and then demanding a vote to set the price on it. If BurgerKing up'd the price of the bigmac to $500.00 people would just goto TacoBell or another fast food place and BurgerKing would be doomed. The only thing that changes in the world of icann/rootservers is that you don't see the alternatives placed right next to ICANN with bright signs saying "EAT HERE". And unless your a network admin you shouldn't care. After all, thats who gives you the name servers you use. (Note: yes, i know, you can change the nameservers you use blah blah blah resolv.conf blah blah. Just keep in mine the gerneral public doesn't really know or, to a degree, care to change their settings.)

In short ICANN is a service and you pay service tax. Should we get a say in the tax's price? Sure and we do, everytime we buy a domainname from them.

RESOLVE HERE

you have some good points but there is one big differance between the taxation without representation of say, England and early America and this. One is a forced tax which you have to pay to live and not goto jail, while the other is more of a service charge then a tax(but still a tax!). This tax can't get _really_ out of hand because people won't let it. If they tried to charge an extra $500.00 for a domainname it wouldn't take long before their root servers are not used and everyone turns to another, better(?)[OpenNIC], set of rootservers. They're are other servers out there that you can use.

Taxation without representation doesn't really apply here because you are repesented as the customer. It would be like calling the price of a bigmac a tax and then demanding a vote to set the price on it. If BurgerKing up'd the price of the bigmac to $500.00 people would just goto TacoBell or another fast food place and BurgerKing would be doomed. The only thing that changes in the world of icann/rootservers is that you don't see the alternatives placed right next to ICANN with bright signs saying "EAT HERE". And unless your a network admin you shouldn't care. After all, thats who gives you the name servers you use. (Note: yes, i know, you can change the nameservers you use blah blah blah resolv.conf blah blah. Just keep in mine the gerneral public doesn't really know or, to a degree, care to change their settings.)

In short ICANN is a service and you pay service tax. Should we get a say in the tax's price? Sure and we do, everytime we buy a domainname from them.

RESOLVE HERE

They have an alternate link which should work.

Failing that it resolves to Name: scoop.opennic.unrated.net Address: 131.161.247.69 using the Open Root-Server Confeds alternative.

I must admit it all gets a tad confusing at times. I plugged the Open Root-Servers into dnscache the other day but now there's another alternative?
Sheez....
Do I want the red one, yellow one or the striped shiny one? Too many choices.

Isn't this what OpenNIC is/was doing? I always thought that a generic .DOM TLD would be great, but I don't have the time or resources to do what OpenNIC requires to get the idea out in the open.

perhaps a .gnu is in order for open source projects, for instance.

Don't you mean for GPL'd projects?

At any rate, I don't see why one organization (such as ICANN) should be able to control all top level domains. Why can't there be many organizations that provide top level domains, and the ISP and users decide which ones they use. For example, your .gnu could be handled by RMS.

There already are providers of alternate top level domains--OpenNIC for one. They even have a .oss domain for Open source projects.

I say let the open market decide--sure, you'll have conflicting names. Say someone registers booger.biz under ICANN, and someone else already owns booger.biz in the OpenNIC system. Who cares. ICANN cares because they think they are the supreme dictators of DNS, but if I don't want to recognize ICANN's .biz that they deliberately collided with OpenNIC, then it is my business!

You guys should take a look at OpenNIC, right now it's not under the influence of the corporate world and the open source community could build real and useful domain names (i.e. wine.oss for wine, slashdot.weblog, etc...)

The Link is actually OpenNIC Sorry about that.

OpenNIC is still around, and has been for two years. It was proposed on K5 1 Jun 2000, and was operational soon thereafter. A month later, it was serving 4 alternate TLDs. Today, it serves 6 with a specific new one pending, and talks of serving out several language-related TLDs (like the ccTLDs, but for languages). Others have been around since before us, and they're still reasonably active. There's also AlterNIC, PacRoot, ORSC, ORSN, and others.

Most, if not all, alternative roots peer the majority of legacy TLDs (i.e., those of ICANN), including the new ones. We (OpenNIC) have peering agreements with AlterNIC and PacRoot, and we're working on others as well.

So, what exactly are you talking about? Geeks haven't abandoned alternative roots. We are quite active.

If you had followed the link to opennic.org, you would have found answers to all your questions. If you still can't figure it out from there, ill direct you to this page. If you STILL can't figure it out, then you probably wouldnt be interested in any of those web pages anyway.

HTH.

From OpenNIC's TLD list, you have chosen the TLDs .glue, .indy, .geek, .null, .oss, .parody, and .bbs. All of these are either horribly narrow-reaching and have no reason to be a TLD (.geek, .oss, .parody), sound stupid (.glue, .indy), look stupid (.geek, .oss, .bbs), or are too long (all of them except .oss and .bbs).

These are the same reasons nobody wants a domain under .biz, .info, .museum or any of the other "official" new TLDs. Geeks seem to be naturally deficient at proper design, so I'm not blaming what is essentially a geek project for having this problem. An alternative to the monstrosity Verisign and ICANN have made of their root servers is severely needed. But, if I may, I would like to suggest you ditch these ugly TLDs and put some more thought into choosing names people actually would want on the end of their site names. Think to yourself, would you seriously consider getting a ".parody" domain? Here are some tips:

• The TLDs must all be short. Extremely short. No more than 3 characters. Preferably monosyllabic.
• Don't use ugly letters like 'y', 'k', or 'z', especially at the beginning or end of the domain.
• Avoid catering to special interests. ".com", ".org" and ".net" all work because they're broad and unspecific. TLDs like ".geek" and ".oss" are just going to make nongeeks roll their eyes and look elsewhere.
• Most importantly, before you approve a new TLD, seriously ask yourself (and preferably a few other regular people), "would I buy a domain under this TLD?" Few people are going to want a ".geek" domain, I can tell you.

There is a way to begin to move away from Verisign
OpenNIC :: http://www.opennic.unrated.net/

The OpenNIC is a user owned and controlled Network Information Center offering a democratic, non-national, alternative to the traditional Top-Level Domain registries.

Membership in the OpenNIC is open to every user of the Internet. All decisions are made either by a democratically elected administrator or through a direct ballot of the interested members and all decisions, regardless of how they are made, within OpenNIC are appealable to a vote of the general membership.

Using their root zone will have NO adverse effects on your current websurfing but it will allow you to view alternative roots which have been democratically decided upon.

Check it out!

I reply to this because I bet a lot of people are going to think this.

The real problem is that you're probably using port 80 for something other than what it's explicit purpose.

No, that's not it at all. Follow the openNIC link.

What he's trying to do is resolve an address, via the perfectly standard and normal DNS protocol, with an alternative root server. This is also perfectly standard and normal. This is not a violation of DNS, nor any other protocol, nor is it a particularly wierd thing to want to do. (Unusual, but perfectly normal.)

The problem is that his ISP is catching all traffic to port 80, and redirecting it to their proxy. Thus, when he asks for "http://www.something.nonstandardroot", the web proxy is interfering with the request (presumably after his home computer correctly resolved the DNS address of www.something.nonstandardroot), catching the GET part of the HTTP request, extracting the server name, and attempting on it's own to resolve the name.

(Note this is a complete waste: The home computer has probably already resolved the address, now the proxy will resolve it again.)

Unfortunately, the proxy is too ignorant to know how to resolve the alternate DNS address. It's not incapable in the technical sense, it just doesn't understand root servers it's not configured for. The problem is that this means that the perfectly normal and acceptable HTTP request, for an HTML document, on an IP address the client computer has already perfectly normally resolved, gets lost, because the proxy doesn't know how to resolve the address. Bad proxy!

A workaround, albiet a sucky one, is to resolve the address on one's home computer, then go to that IP address manually. This still causes problems on subdomain-aware webservers, where several domains or subdomains may all come from the same IP address, and the server wants to use the host part of the HTTP GET request to differentiate what to serve. (You could code up a quick Python/TK script to do this, but it'll still suck.)

So, when you say a proxy is not required to route anything anywhere, you've accidentally hit on the exact problem: a proxy shouldn't be routing, because it may not know how. This proxy tries to. That's why it sucks.

And to cover the last part of your post, there's absolutely nothing non-standard about any of this, except the behavior of the proxy, which is the only thing in this whole mess that hasn't "embrace[d] the DNS standard, HTTP standard and the routing standard". ICANN's root servers are not written into RFC's. They are merely common practice, one that many people, probably correctly, believe is an increasingly dangerous common practice. (You may not completely agree, but the opinions deserve consideration.)

I think there are a few things amiss with the pfir plan and I'd like to suggest and comment on some alternatives and have a few comments about our continues use of 20th century DNS.

Look back at the creation of ICANN and it's not difficult to see why it has failed. The timeline goes something like this: when the Wired article came out in 1994 where Joshua Quittner reported he registered mcdonalds.com and McDonalds didn't want it he ended up selling it to Burger King. At the time InterNIC registrations were taking about 3 days. This shot up to 11 weeks in a matter of days. The NSF, who funded NSI to run the InterNIC, did not feel it's role, which is to foster academic and scientific advancement, included subsidizing deodorant.com and the like, so, it asked the FNCAC to do something. What they did was instruct the NSF to tell NSI to begin charging for domains. This caught the Internet community rather off guard and discussion ensued on a "newdom" mailing list (whose archives can be found here). Several forces came into play. First was the rift between the group that felt they too could run a TLD and the group that though this should be run from a great big central registry. The latter became the IAHC/CORE thing while the former became the first alternative root. The US Government shut down the IAHC and began it's own proceedings: the white paper was produced. Other governments, most notably in the form of Paul Twoomey from Australia
and Chris Wilkinson from the EU balked at the plan and the revised plan, the green paper took out the language about creating 5 new TLDs immediately (thereby throwing each conflicted group at least one bone). At the time Mikki Barry and Kathy Kleinman suggested in Becky Burr's office that a set of global meetings take place, not to decide answers to tough problems, but to determine just where there was consensus on the various issues. This became the IFWP forum and 3 meetings were held in Reston Va., Geneva, and Singapore. There was to be a followup meeting to merge these consensus points into a framework for the new corporation that was to replace IANA. While this was happening, NSI and IANA were negotiating, and Ira Magaziner, Clinton's senior science advisor and Roger Cochetti, a VP of IBM were running around selecting a new board. The IFWP wrap up meeting never happened, it was scuttled by Mike Roberts (suspicion is high he had been told be would be president) and the vast amount of time and energy, money, hopes and aspirations that was IFWP went down the toilet - which is a real shame as it was a significant body of work. Three proposals went in to the US government to form the new corporation. The IANA/NSI proposal drafted by Joe Sims and NSI, the Boston Working Group proposal (which is where the wrap-up meeting was to have been) which was a sane version of the NSI/ICANN proposal, and the ORSC proposal which was the BWG plan with greater fiscal responsibility and an existing corporate shell. Citing popular public support for the IANA/NSI plan it was selected - but if you read the public comments on the NTIA site carefully you'll see far less support than implied and much of it was tentative, frankly. A board materialized out if thin air, selected because they didn't know anything about DNS. So what went wrong? Was the original ICANN plan flawed or were the people just the wrong choices? I suggest that if Karl Aurbach and 9 people like him has been the original board we would not now be even talking about DNS; the board appointed from in high did not represent the Internet community whatsoever and instead represented telco, government and trademark special interests. It is believed the concessions made so that foreign government supported the "green paper" was that they got to pick certain members of the board. The first big clue there was trouble was when the board missed it's deadline to define a process for their replacement and simply extended their jobs; they should have been gone over two years ago now.

So what have we learned from this? In my opinion, no group that says "we're in charge" really is; respect is earned, not asserted and I think this was the great failing of both IAHC and ICANN. So while I generally like Weinstein, Newman and Farber, I do distrust the IAB to some extent based on previous debacles like the Boston Tea party where they were thrown out for claiming OSI and not TCP/IP was the way to go. The ISOC is another non-starter, it's wanted to get it's hands on the DNS for over a decade and has been a great supporter of the authoritarian regimes of both IAHC and ICANN. The key, I believe, is not some group claiming they should be in charge or that they have all the answers - nobody does - but the good old fashioned and time proven method of Internet collaborative cooperation. And this means actually doing it, not paying lip service to it like ICANN did. Oh and cut out the 5 star hotels and first class Concorde flights.

Is this about Internet governance? No. Absolutely not. In it's most basic form this is nothing more than an institutionalized debate between Dave Crocker and Karl Denninger in 1986 taken to it's logical conclusion. But it's nothing to do with governance of the Internet. Face it, if all you do is read and write email and/or usenet news, and play on ISC or muck about on the web, you may never have heard of ICANN and it certainly has zero effect on you. This is just about new top level domains, period; the IP addresses have virtually all been handed over to the regional registries and the port allocations are handles by somebody than CAN add one to a number and write it down on a piece of paper.

But didn't ICANN break up NSI ? Nope. That was Ira Magaziners plan executed through the Department of Commerce. You don't really think NSI gave in because ICANN though it was a good idea do you? What has ICANN really done in 4 years? They've knuckled under to WIPO and given us the horribly flawed UDRP and 7 really stupid TLDs that despite $2.$M worth of scrutiny still had huge problems to the point of being dragged into court over it.

What alternative roots exist? Quite a few actually, and while on the face of it you might think this would be a problem, but face it, if you can pick up your mail and get to Yahoo! then they work, and any of them will let you do that. The differences in them are what new TLDs they publish in their root zones. I need to disclaim right away that I coordinate, with Brian Reid's help, the ORSC root, and it's generally believed to have the greatest penetration and is certainly the longest continuously operating one. The barrier to entry it low: show us working TLD servers and we'll list you. Other notable ones are the TINC root which is operated by some old time Usenet people such as Peter da Silva which has a policy of one tld per entity, which I don't like think can be made to work (the now defunct eDNS tried this and it was found to be too easily worked around), PacROOT which in my opinion swings too far the other way with their NameSlinger client - I don't think I know the proper number of TLDS any entity should operate but I do know it's not in the hundreds if not thousands; this raises anti-trust issues, and OpenNIC which is pretty good but only has a small number of new TLDs. There is also NameSpace which believes they should run all tlds. This grates against the notion of the root as a collection of independantly run TLDs in my opinion. But, it doesn't matter to me which one people use as long as they use one of them. Vote with your nameservers - it is in nobody's interest to break anything and using any of these roots will let you see all current DNS names and a whole universe of new ones although how many depends on which one you pick.

Why do we still use root servers? Now this is where it gets interesting. What if the US Government suddenly shut off the legacy root servers? 90% of the net would feel some sort of perturbation immediately especially since at least one TLD (.SE) is name-served directly from the root (not TLD!) servers as are many in-addr.arpa delegations. As the TTLs to TLD servers expired, users of the legacy root would not be able to resolve any DNS names. But, people that use other root servers would be immune to the demise of the legacy roots (modulo one of Swedens 7 .SE nameservers of course) but an even better tactic in my opinion is to primary the root zone for yourself. Then, any or all root servers could be shut off and you wouldn't notice a thing. This would leave you with one remaining problem and that is where could you get the root zone from. Your upstream might be a good place or as DJB has suggested, a cryptographically signed root zone could be posted to usenet periodically. This has the inherent advantage of being out of band of TCP/IP; that is, even a UUCP connection could inject the zone into the news stream. That's one answer to "how do you bootstrap DNS without DNS".

Do I think ORSC should be the next ICANN as the ICANNWATCH poll suggests? No and hell no! Nobody should be in charge, and given that the net and the DNS itself is edge controlled - that is, whoever has the root password to a nameserver determines what dns names exist and what don't - any model that asserts a central authority is doomed to fail. There is need for coordination, but not authority.

Vote with your nameserver; vote early and vote often.

Richard Sexton
March 19, 2002

You *are* free to do this now. There are several alternative roots, or you are free to build your own - just like the early days of the internet when there was no centralized control.

• OpenNIC
• AlterNIC
• The Pacific Root

If you run your own DNS server (even if just for your own use), give them a try.

Take a look at the grass root initiatives to counter act the threat to democratic Internet namespace decision making caused by the ICANN.

The (intermediate) solution is in my opinion to support and use the OpenNIC project.

OpenNIC is a user owned, international Network Information Center alternative to the traditional Top-Level Domain registries. OpenNIC was started in 2000 as a reaction to the growing concern about the lack of democratic control within the ICANN.

The OpenNIC discussion forum is here

I hope that in the future more nameserver packages are willing to provide OpenNIC root nameserver support in their default configuration files.

Take a look at the grass root initiatives to counter act the threat to democratic Internet namespace decision making caused by the ICANN.

The (intermediate) solution is in my opinion to support and use the OpenNIC project.

OpenNIC is a user owned, international Network Information Center alternative to the traditional Top-Level Domain registries. OpenNIC was started in 2000 as a reaction to the growing concern about the lack of democratic control within the ICANN.

The OpenNIC discussion forum is here

I hope that in the future more nameserver packages are willing to provide OpenNIC root nameserver support in their default configuration files.

One of them is OpenNIC.

The challenge is just getting people to use the other routes. Most people don't think there's a problem. Mainly because they don't know what's going on with ICANN.

Are you already using the OpenNIC DNS servers? If not, you shouldn't be trying to use opennic.glue anyway and that URL should be http://scoop.opennic.unrated.net/?op=special;page= faq.

Use OpenNIC, a truly democratic system for domain names.

It only takes about 2-5 minutes to set up on your computer.

Learn more by reading the OpenNIC FAQ.

Use OpenNIC, a truly democratic system for domain names.

It only takes about 2-5 minutes to set up on your computer.

Learn more by reading the OpenNIC FAQ.

One solution to the problem of Top Level Domains controlled by large corporations is www.opennic.glue or www.opennic.unrated.net for those of you who can't resolve the .glue TLD. From the FAQ

"What is the OpenNIC?
The OpenNIC is a user owned and controlled Network Information Center offering a democratic, non-national, alternative to the traditional Top-Level Domain registries.
Users of the OpenNIC DNS servers, in addition to resolving host names in the Legacy U.S. Government DNS, can resolve host names in the OpenNIC operated namespaces as well as in the namespaces with which we have peering agreements (at this time those are AlterNIC and The Pacific Root).

Who makes up the OpenNIC?
Membership in the OpenNIC is open to every user of the Internet. All decisions are made either by a democratically elected administrator or through a direct ballot of the interested members and all decisions, regardless of how they are made, within OpenNIC are appealable to a vote of the general membership."

OpenNIC currently resolves .indy, .geek, .null, .oss, or .parody. I am not sure what (if any) protection exists against the IRC problem, but I think since it is a democratic system, a 14-year old kid (with bad intentions) is not going to be able to convince enough people to vote for him. They do have a strict policy on spamming, too.

there already IS a .geek TLD

its an OpenNIC TLD

They show you how to easly add name servers!

Do it! Get/help other people to do it! Spread the word, and we can help overthrow ICANN!

there already IS a .geek TLD

its an OpenNIC TLD

They show you how to easly add name servers!

Do it! Get/help other people to do it! Spread the word, and we can help overthrow ICANN!

That's why I use OpenNIC instead of the ICANN one. They have some decent domains, and each domain has a domain manager that decides how the domain will be distributed.

People are actually running their own nameservers outside of ICANN in a quite ordered way - there's a host of .ocean, .dot, .children, and similar top level domains out there - all you need to do is use one of those nameservers. Go take a look at OpenNIC - through which you can also use the top level domains from PacificRoot and AlterNIC.

After reading through this, I browsed over to OpenNIC and registered for free. Then I setup my name server as per their instructions ( They have instructions for regular, non-nameserver running people too ) and everything is up and running smoothly.

I highly recommend that others do the same "just in case".

The least you could have done is check your links.

I personally like OpenNIC, but there are even more like Pacific Root and commercial ones like New.Net

OpenNic sounds like a reasonably democratic choice. They allow voting on new TLDs. If there is any criticism of them, I'd like to hear it right here. Remember, if we can't vote, we can still vote with our feet.

For the supreme protest against ICANN, try an alternative root server, such as OpenNIC.

Some of the open DNS groups are playing nicely with each other, particularly OpenNIC. I'd say that's probably better than one big Evil Empire (TM).

Educate yourself, then speak.

All DNS does is translate human friendly names to IP addresses. If the root servers died tomorrow, hitting slashdot's IP address would still work.

Granted, you'd have a tough time finding the IP if the roots were really done, but the failure of DNS has nothing to do with how the "networks" talk to each other.

What you're really talking about is the unified domain name space, having most of the users of the Net being able to resolve names certainly does keep the Net moving.

However, the ICANN roots (and their name space) are not the only ones in town. There are currently several different groups of alternate Network Information Centers (NICs) such as OpenNIC. Using them is fairly trival for any admin; if enough of us start using them, ICANN no longer has power.

Individual users don't need to modify their DNS setups, they should be pointing to their ISP's name servers anyway; saves both bandwidth and lookups.

I suspect that China will be the first to set up its own root DNS servers and start issuing non-ICANN-approved domain names,

First? It is already several years too late for China to somehow be first. Alternate roots have been around for a long time. I use one, you can too.

The OpenNIC is a user owned and controlled Network Information Center offering a democratic, non-national, alternative to the traditional Top-Level Domain registries.

Users of the OpenNIC DNS servers, in addition to resolving host names in the Legacy U.S. Government DNS, can resolve host names in the OpenNIC operated namespaces as well as in the namespaces with which we have peering agreements (at this time those are AlterNIC and The Pacific Root).

Membership in the OpenNIC is open to every user of the Internet. All decisions are made either by a democratically elected administrator or through a direct ballot of the interested members and all decisions, regardless of how they are made, within OpenNIC are appealable to a vote of the general membership.

OpenNIC
Open RSC
AlterNIC
Tiny Org
NameSpace

(Links courtesy of Lionfire.)

you mean like this?

The big problem were the absolutely shitty AT&T nameservers which were also rigged to hijack whatever name you were trying to resolve at random moments and direct you to the attbi.com help page.

Thank god for OpenNIC.

Other than that, service has been reliable, though it is true that downloads are now limited to 1.5Mbps instead of ~8Mbps I was getting before.

Since a lot of you are having DNS problems, it might be a good time to switch to OpenNIC DNS servers. I did a week ago and it is very cool. You'll be able to resolve legacy DNS zones, such as .com, .net, and .org, but you'll get the cool, open zones as well.

There is a list of public servers, but please use the tier 2 DNS servers. Find the lowest latency servers and follow the directions if you don't know how to set up DNS.

Then, if you get into it, get a .geek domain! Don't worry if you can't go to the .geek NIC yet, you'll have to set up the open DNS servers for your machine or network.

P.S.

My AT&T@Home came back up two days ago (Seattle).

Since a lot of you are having DNS problems, it might be a good time to switch to OpenNIC DNS servers. I did a week ago and it is very cool. You'll be able to resolve legacy DNS zones, such as .com, .net, and .org, but you'll get the cool, open zones as well.

There is a list of public servers, but please use the tier 2 DNS servers. Find the lowest latency servers and follow the directions if you don't know how to set up DNS.

Then, if you get into it, get a .geek domain! Don't worry if you can't go to the .geek NIC yet, you'll have to set up the open DNS servers for your machine or network.

P.S.

My AT&T@Home came back up two days ago (Seattle).

Since a lot of you are having DNS problems, it might be a good time to switch to OpenNIC DNS servers. I did a week ago and it is very cool. You'll be able to resolve legacy DNS zones, such as .com, .net, and .org, but you'll get the cool, open zones as well.

There is a list of public servers, but please use the tier 2 DNS servers. Find the lowest latency servers and follow the directions if you don't know how to set up DNS.

Then, if you get into it, get a .geek domain! Don't worry if you can't go to the .geek NIC yet, you'll have to set up the open DNS servers for your machine or network.

P.S.

My AT&T@Home came back up two days ago (Seattle).

Since a lot of you are having DNS problems, it might be a good time to switch to OpenNIC DNS servers. I did a week ago and it is very cool. You'll be able to resolve legacy DNS zones, such as .com, .net, and .org, but you'll get the cool, open zones as well.

There is a list of public servers, but please use the tier 2 DNS servers. Find the lowest latency servers and follow the directions if you don't know how to set up DNS.

Then, if you get into it, get a .geek domain! Don't worry if you can't go to the .geek NIC yet, you'll have to set up the open DNS servers for your machine or network.

Since a lot of you are having DNS problems, it might be a good time to switch to OpenNIC DNS servers. I did a week ago and it is very cool. You'll be able to resolve legacy DNS zones, such as .com, .net, and .org, but you'll get the cool, open zones as well.

There is a list of public servers, but please use the tier 2 DNS servers. Find the lowest latency servers and follow the directions if you don't know how to set up DNS.

Then, if you get into it, get a .geek domain! Don't worry if you can't go to the .geek NIC yet, you'll have to set up the open DNS servers for your machine or network.

Since a lot of you are having DNS problems, it might be a good time to switch to OpenNIC DNS servers. I did a week ago and it is very cool. You'll be able to resolve legacy DNS zones, such as .com, .net, and .org, but you'll get the cool, open zones as well.

There is a list of public servers, but please use the tier 2 DNS servers. Find the lowest latency servers and follow the directions if you don't know how to set up DNS.

Then, if you get into it, get a .geek domain! Don't worry if you can't go to the .geek NIC yet, you'll have to set up the open DNS servers for your machine or network.

Check out OpenNIC's OpenDNS:

OpenNIC: Configuring a Personal Computer

OpenNIC: Public Name Servers

Check out OpenNIC's OpenDNS:

OpenNIC: Configuring a Personal Computer

OpenNIC: Public Name Servers

So stop whining already and point your name client at OpenNIC, the non-ICANN name space. (Of course, OpenNIC includes the ICANN name space as a subdomain).

Also OpenNIC is an ICANN indepent root system ... why not just use them instead of ICANN?

Actually, some are non-profit organizations supported simply by the participation of their members. I am personally a member of the OpenNIC* alternative DNS organization, which is dedicated to creating a democratic namespace where issues are voted upon by the membership while avoiding as best is possible collisions with other roots, and providing chartered TLDs to avoid namespace crowding and legal disputes by setting a standard for the types of domains that can reside in a particular TLD. We also peer TLDs with cooperating organizations such as PacRoot and AlterNIC. And we have both root servers (query terminators) you can use as zone masters for your own servers, and caching nameservers you can put in your DNS config / resolv.conf

I'd suggest checking out some of these things. PacRoot now has an Inclusive Root plugin for Windows, though I don't know too much about it yet. Also, I've written a patch** for the GNU C Library to allow users to specify alternate resolv.conf files in their environment, making it easier to use alternative roots on a per-user or per-process basis. A lot is being done to make moving away from ICANN and into community-operated roots as easy as possible.

* A number of pages on the main OpenNIC site are a bit dated; more current info can be found on our scoop site.

** My README seems to be missing, but the patches are there, compressed and uncompressed, as well as a couple precompiled libc.so files and some statically-linked fileutils in case you want to try popping in a binary, though I don't know how feasible this is, I've only compiled from source on my system. Also, I've provided 2.2.4, but I recommend 2.2.3 as it is more stable in my opinion. I'll put up an index.html as I have time.