Choosing an Alternate Root Server?

issachar asks: "While it seems that almost everyone at Slashdot believes that the ICANN / Verisign monopoly on TLD's is a bad thing, there doesn't seem to be a lot of agreement on which is the best alternate root server. While it might be impossible to give a simple answer to this question, perhaps some sort of unity would be a good thing. The recent story on Name.Space, doesn't do anything to clear up the confusion for people who are trying to pick an alternate root server. Furthermore, it seems that co-operation isn't working very well as OpenNIC doesn't recognise the ORSC yet. The frequent suggestion to get one of the major ISP's such as AOL on board won't fly until we have a leader (or at least a group of leading root servers that agree on basic principles). Any thoughts?"

Comments

It's like the 1980s all over again..

[Girf]

The question should be: Why are we still using DNS?

When the Internet was young, there were a few servers, many had web servers and served pages, but the difference was that the URL would look like http://www.theirserver.theircompany.com/~myweb/sub ject/page.html instead of http://www.page.com/

DNS was never meant for all these virtual hosts, etc.

My advise: Use google. I call it GNS (Google Name Service). If you were looking for a company called Foobar LLC, you simply go to http://www.google.com/search?q=foobar+llc&btnI= and you are there, at their homepage.. Now replace www.google.com with google's IP, and you can boycott DNS altogether..

Re:It's like the 1980s all over again..

[rehannan]

And here's what your magical Foobar LLC search reveals...

http://www.dignus.com/freebies/

Am I bored? No. Am I trying to put off homework? Yes. :)

Re:It's like the 1980s all over again..

[shinji]

And how does this avoid DNS? you still have to resolve the host name given to you by google to an IP address. These virtual hosts still have to be in DNS to be looked up. The problem is the iron fist ICAAN is controlling DNS names with, not tech troubles.

Re:It's like the 1980s all over again..

[ASyndicate]

In the beginning all the hosts on the network had a 'hosts' file on their computer.

However, Yes, Later it was http://www.server.company.com mostly it still is, however with the dot-suck. Everyone wanted .coms and would do anything to get one.

Its not about the root domains either. I see it like a power company: Its hard to change providers. Besides, they arent doing anything wrong, unless you know. And DNS was meant for all these virtual hosts. The IP pool was not, however.


-syndicate

There is no alternative

[biot]

Asking for the "best alternate root server" is like asking for the "best car crash" to be in. There is no alternative.

Read RFC 2826.

Re:There is no alternative

[Inti]

Mind being a bit more verbose? What is it exactly that makes the ICANN/Verisign root preferable to some of the alternatives? I think your statement is non-obvious to a lot of people here.

Yes, in the past there has been a lot of "tempest in a teapot" kinds of squabbles in the alt DNS scene. The scene is maturing rapidly, though. We are approaching the point of having a unified alternate root, a sort of federal namespace. We are still in the beta stage, metaphorically, but it won't be long before we're ready for a 1.0 release.

Claim your namespace.

Re:There is no alternative

[raju1kabir]

Mind being a bit more verbose? What is it exactly that makes the ICANN/Verisign root preferable to some of the alternatives?

It works.

Any rational person who wants to make information available via the web, be contactable via email, etc., will want the widest possible availability (or if they do not, the criteria for limiting availability will not be based on participation in alternate roots, unless the resource in question is a web page about how cool alternate roots are).

Therefore, anything that anyone could want to see or use will be available through the "default" name space.

Therefore, there's no compelling reason for anyone other than hardcore nerds to switch their roots.

Therefore, it won't happen.

The only possible exception is if ICANN or its successor does something to really piss off the major ISPs. If you want to give the alt roots a kick in the pants, work on manipulating ICANN into shooting themselves in the foot.

Re:There is no alternative

[Inti]

There is truth in what you say.

On the other had, there's no reason you have to give up your existing domain name to use a new one. You can simply put your web page on both names, forward one email account to the other, whatever. All of us do this now, though we hope in a few years it won't be necessary. And since OpenNIC domains are free, there is no extra cost.

I do actually have web spaces and email in the conventional namespace. But I can put my OpenNIC email on /. and not get spammer!

Claim your namespace.

TINC!

[Nonesuch]

The only choice for me is The Internet Namespace Cooperative.

Download your own copy of the root cache file and you have all the functionality of the internic "root zone" and then some.

Not an answer, but an idea

[scotpurl]

I think I have a great idea of how to put Verisign out of business.

Why not just create one central authority (U.N. manages, so that there's at least the illusion of the U.S. not controlling it) that doles out words/numbers/character sequences to various groups, hereafter called a root domain, and analogous to the current .org, .com, .net root domains.

Each group that buys one of these word spaces can then sell namespace to anyone they want. In exchange for money, the root domain owners will maintain root servers for that root domain, and send information back the master root servers about who owns what word or character sequence (should you desire your domain to be named in binary, or code, or even be an encrypted string).

Thus VA Linux buys the rights to the .linux domain. They sell me the domain CluelessAbout.linux. When someone wants to hit my domain, it asks the U.N. root servers if .linux exists as a domain, and who owns it. The U.N. root server returns pointer to the VA Linux owned .linux root servers, who then answer the query.

This works nicely for multilingual domain names (and even non-ASCII), since we're after character sequences, and not Verisign-owned .com domains, and allows for some folks to own, say, the .CocaCola domain, but have no legitimate rights to CocaCola.Sucks, or even SnortSome.Coke.

Re:Not an answer, but an idea

[raju1kabir]

Why not just create one central authority (U.N. manages, so that there's at least the illusion of the U.S. not controlling it) that doles out words/numbers/character sequences to various groups, hereafter called a root domain, and analogous to the current .org, .com, .net root domains.

You definitely don't want UN-affiliated bodies anywhere near critical IT infrastructure. Ever hear of the ITU? ISO?

These bodies are made up of national governments, who send senior people from their telecom ministries as delegates. Almost all national governments continue to run their phone companies, and therefore have direct incentives to maximize revenue.

The result has been a steady tradition of obstruction and anti-disclosure. The ITU has been fighting against the internet since Day One, pausing only occasionally to float proposals in which it gets to control it (and shut it down). ITU and ISO don't even freely publish standards - you have to pay thousands of dollars to get a copy. The result, of course, is that only entrenched parties get to play.

Trust me, nothing would be a quicker death blow to the internet. What UN bodies want is for the internet to go away so international phone tariffs can rocket back to the stratosphere again and nobody will be in danger of losing revenue from timed local call charges, or have to waste money on costly new infrastructure to support annoying new "features" like high-speed data networking that customers somehow think they have a right to demand.

The US and the corporate world are far from saintly, but when it comes to this, they're much more your friend than the UN is.

Root Servers

[Bryan Andersen]

My personal opinion is you wish to sell host names then you must provide atleast one root name server for all to use for each TLD you sell names under, and if you have multiple name servers you must have them geographically dispersed. Your root name servers will provide lookups for all the TLDs. If you can't provide that, then you don't get to sell domain names. You want to start a new TLD, then provide the root name server. This would show a certin level of commitment.

To do this all the root name servers would need to agree on a means for updating domain name service information in real time, but that should be possible.

Yes, I know a root name server is a beast to operate, but then you are providing a service that can't suffer outtages.

Re:Root Servers

[Inti]

Interesting you should point this out, because that is exactly the policy we have over at the OpenNIC. Each TLD (we only have four now) has a root nameserver, which is synched with a central master server. These are dispersed (at present we have servers in the Bay Area, LA, New York and New Jersey).

See http://www.opennic.glue/public_servers.html

or

http://www.opennic.unrated.net/public_servers.html if you're not using opennic nameservers.

Of course, we don't sell domain names. They're free.

Claim your namespace.

OpenNIC!

[Inti]

For me it would have to be OpenNIC. TINC is fine, but I think the basic idea of a democratically governed namespace is important enough to decide the issue. At least for me.

As far as the issue of cooperation between the roots, that is something we are working on quite a bit now. In the last few months OpenNIC has begun peering TLDs from both AlterNIC and the Pacific Root (including quite a few that are also in the ORSC root, such as .biz). We are currently trying to work out agreements with TINC (answer your email, guys!), ORSC and name.space. The only group which seems to be resolutely set against cooperation is new.net. If you have no other reason not to use them, that should be enough.

OpenNIC also provides full resolution of the ICANN/Verisign and country code TLDs, and all of the other legacy TLDs.

The main obstacle to cooperation is the existence of multiple claims to a few popular TLD strings.Both ORSC and AlterNIC, for example, claim .nic. And .xxx. And some others with obvious symbolic and/or commercial significance. We are trying to work these issues out. We are making progress, I think, in spite of some of the egos involved.

I urge everyone who is sick of ICANN to start using one of the alternate roots. I recommend OpenNIC, but that should soon become irrelevant with the establishment of a more or less unified alternate namespace.

I would also urge people who believe in this to register domain names in alternate namespace and to make content available under those domains. After all, the only way we'll ever get any kind of widespread adoption is by having content that is sufficiently compelling to make people complain to their ISPs about not being able to see it.

Claim your namespace.

we're working on it ... ;-)

[lem]

You're right that ORSC and OpenNIC haven't come to an agreement yet, but it's on the cards. We (OpenNIC) have arranged namespace peering with AlterNIC and PacRoot and we (and ORSC) are actively pursuing a solution in which it won't matter through which root your resolve, since the alternates will be peering each others' data.

Since ORSC has been (to my knowledge) the most relaxed about adding new TLDs to their root in the past, they have a lot of work to do in identifying conflicts between their space and other which OpenNIC doesn't need to do on account of the project's yourth (OpenNIC is still less than a year old). ORSC was one of the first and did not have the benefit of observing others' experience first as we did. They're working on it though, and we're interested in peering with them when they're ready, though.

So, exercise patience; most of the alterate roots are interested in unifying the namespace (while retaining the independance of each root within their own space, of course), so this is building. It does take time, though, so please, pick the root you like best and use it. Encourage that root to cooperate with the rest of us in building a federated namespace. It'll get there. ;-)

I won't make the argument for choosing OpenNIC, though obviously that's the one I use, since inti's done that below. Just choose the one which fits the best with your opinions and help it work with the others.

-robin

OpenSRS

[wizzy403]

Well, there's always OpenSRS. If you have more than a few domains and have your own server, this is definitely the way to go. You get total control, and as a bonus only pay $10/year for .com, .net, .org.

Of course, if you only have one domain, you're still screwed... Who wants to pony up $250 for just one domain :P

Interesting

[danpbrowning]

I like to setup my own dns server and put all the roots that I can find in it.

OSRC!

[Russ Nelson]

Open Root Server Coalition is the only choice, of course!

And people wonder why we haven't adopted alternative roots. As bad as NSI is, conflicting TLD's would be worse.
-russ