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There already exists alternative root servers organized by the ORSC. For the most part, they seem to be providing hundreds their own set of TLD's (.god for example) as well as ICANN's official set (.com/.org/.net).

The only real problem is the ".biz" namespace collision. When ICANN requested suggestions for new gTLDs, the OSRC sumbitted their application, stating that they had been running a functioning .biz TLD for years. However, ICANN selected someone else to run the .biz gTLD.

ICANN really ticks me off sometimes...

Considering that TLD are controlled by ICANN, I went searching for other TLD domains. I found out that there is underground (i.e. not official) heirarchies of alternative TLD's. It did not surprise me. The Internet DNS is, presumably, ONE large, distributed database. However, who says you cannot have many large, distributed DNS database. These "alternative" DNS heirarchies also has the ICANN TLD's (.com, .net, .org) in them for backward compatibility, but introduce 100's of other TLD's ( .radio, .hotel, .god, .etc). The downsides are the fact that potential visitors must have their DNS configured to use the heirarchy, and the collision of the namespace with ICANN, mainly the .biz TLD. Check it out at the You Cann Site.

Wired ran a story about this a couple of months back, and I checked it out. It's as easy as replacing your ISP's DNS addresses with ones they provide (well, for me anyway).

http://www.youcann.org

It's not much use unless people start using it, but it opens your eyes as to how the system works. ICANN only has authority if people let them have it. Who said the internet needs to be forced into a top-down design model, anyway?

You want an expanded namespace? You can have one now. Join the OpenNIC, or another of the alternative DNS systems. It's really easy.

OpenNIC

ORSC

Quite whining and waiting for some damn megacorp to do something. Do it yourself!

Claim your namespace.

Let's make all this irrelevant

but couldn't someone... say, like slashdot? just as easily take over the DNS root by soliciting major companies to look this way for domain name information instead of ICANN? And if so, why don't ya?

Check out YouCANN.org and find out about non-ICANN top level domains (TLDs).

Many of those independent TLDs are organized into the Open Root Server Confederation, whose website has a lot of information about how the system operates.

There's nothing intrinsically special about Network Solutions's DNS servers. All that annual registration fee pays for, really, is a couple lines in a BIND configuration file. You could get your DNS from the ORSC's servers or anywhere else if you choose.

The hard part is getting all those institutions using Network Solutions' DNS to query the ORSC's DNS as well.

If this alternate system gets popular enough, all this will become irrelevant

Here's a link to youcann.org, a site devoted to promoting alternative TLDs. Looks like they duplicate the 'standard' DNS information and augment it with their own stuff that ICANN doesn't accept.

It's a very interesting idea, but as this Wired article details, bad things happen when people disagree about who on the Internet is in charge of a certain TLD (.biz in this case).

If you're actually interested in doing something, rather that just complaining all the time, here's an opportunity, staring you in the face.

I think this is a great idea... But what happens when all the good TLDs are taken? Hrmmmm...

I just popped in & registered:

www.the.biz

There's only one page up; I wasn't really expecting it to work. :-)

If you want to see it you'll need to set your computer as shown by:

http://youcann.org/instructions.html

Not that it's really worth seeing (other than to prove it works) but once you're set, you'll be able to see loads of other stuff.

Dyim

Examples of the "other" domains:
http://www.commandments.god/
http://www.405.mov/
http://www.bbc.news/
http://www.cnn.news/

same protocol, different root servers. http://www.youcann.org/ has info on it.. other people have posted the url, but I just looked at it and altered my linux box's root hints file and now I can get to youcann.here for example. Simple stuff and works well.


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