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IETF vs. ICANN
Ian Lance Taylor writes: "Two IETF drafts were filed today which fire a shot across ICANN's bows. They say that anybody who introduces a new version of an existing TLD is destabilizing the DNS--even ICANN. These are still only drafts, mind, not standards. They both acknowledge input from Karl Auerbach, the member of ICANN's board who was elected by North America. The drafts are Alternative Roots and the Virtual Inclusive Root and Root Server Definitions." The IETF drafters are attempting to define a system where non-ICANN TLDs can easily be added. ICANN is set to push their one root concept of operations where ICANN gets absolute authority over internet naming. All ICANN PR is geared toward presenting the ICANN-only plan as being necessary for "internet stability".
ICANN's monopoly on Internet naming created artificial shortages that resulted in the same kind of asinine market conditions which prevail in cities that issue taxi medallions. Cypersquatting and speculation on dot-com names are prime examples. I'm going to register whatkindofidiotpaysamilliondollarsforadomainname.c om and offer to sell it for half a million dollars. But seriously - isn't there a better way to administer the Internet than the ICANN dictatorship?
Note: Anyone at all can publish a document as internet-draft. These documents are the work of Simon Higgs, who has been a proponent of "alternative roots" for many years.
Their publication says ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about how the IETF community as a whole views these matters.
Whatever happend to the decentralized nature of the internet? Isn't there a reason we have more than one root server in the first place? Hello? What ARE these people smoking?
As for a single point of CONTROL, if we're not going to let Microsoft be it, and we're not too happy about the federal government trying that out with encryption exports or various "commnications indecency acts"... Why do they think we're going to let THEM do it?
The main problem with alternic type schemes is they need an alternate search engine. But if Google went along with it, there would be NO problem...
The argument "grandma doesn't know how to set her nameserver" is kind of bogus if you stop and think about it: five years ago grandma didn't know what the internet WAS. The web was just geeks creating value for other geeks, and then the rest of the world found it and wandered in to our party. If we're over creating value in one corner and the rest of the world isn't doing as much with their 95%, then the rest of the world will find us. Remember Napster? Geeks are being QUIET about AudioGalaxy, this time around...
Besides, remember usenet BEFORE AOL found it? A lot of people would consider the exclusivity (while it lasts) to be a good thing. Brains being the price of admission, and all. (Not trying to be bigoted, just saying it's not a BAD thing.)
Rob
Unfortunately, the commonly-proposed solution -- adding more gTLDs -- is not going to help. If health-care organizations get their ".med", then sooner or later, someone is bound to want separate gTLDs for doctors, dentists, and homeopaths. If a ".mp3" gTLD becomes widely used and another music format supplants MP3, then people distributing music in the new format will still set up ".mp3" sites for that purpose. And so on and so on, until users are confused by too many gTLDs, and companies afraid of cybersquatting register their names with 20 gTLDs, not just two or three.
When people learn vocabulary, they learn the words for genuses first, and learn other levels of classification later. That's why a child, seeing a wolf, says "that's a dog", and not "that's a member of the species Canis lupus in the order Carnivora." That's why so many people set up personal domains under the ".com" TLD, even if they have no intention of making these domains commercial ventures -- they recognize ".com" as the default TLD and don't care about its alleged purpose.
Back in the eighteenth century, a number of philosophers tried to construct languages to mirror (their views of) the natural order of things -- their dream was a language where a false statement would be ungrammatical and where related concepts would have similar-sounding words. The people who want to "improve" DNS by adding more gTLDs are falling into the same trap.
We need fewer gTLDs, not more.
--
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
/. .med TLD for years... so those readers who keep up on DNS issues have already heard this rant.
.med domain is so strong that one of the alternative registries has already created the TLD. Unfortunately, ICANN's stranglehold on the industry prevents this alternative registry from seeing wide use (although adoption by hospitals through inclusion of alternative roots in the bind cache is ramping up).
.med finally comes about, the people currently trying to serve the public good by providing the TLD will be marginalized if not driven out of business.
Disclaimer: I'm one of the people that've been petitioning for a
Currently, the hospitals of the world are randomly scattered across the DNS. For example, Fox Chase Cancer Center is fccc.edu, and Holy Spirit Hospital is HolySpiritHospital.Com, and the American Hospital Directory is AHD.Org. All these are non-profits except possibly the last.
The need for a
ICANN has refused to discuss the issue except to say that people who supply a solution to the problem (i.e. alternative registries) are the bad guys, destablizing the Internet (ha! I've been using all the major DNS roots simultaneously for years; just add the additional root entries in BIND).
I expect that when the
--Charlie
Completely disregarding the technical side of that concept, and even disregarding how that would work for email, napster, automatic indexing spiders, etc, you wind up with a big problem:
It's no longer a Universal Resource Locator. One of the great things about a URL is that it refers to a single, discrete point somewhere. It can be on your harddrive (file:), on a LAN (MyServer//), or on the internet (ftp:, http:).
And as for the fellow up above who said "Just add the nameserver to the url", often DNS does not *have* a URL associated with it. For instance, setting up your POP3 or Napster server, you just enter a Domain name.
Also, adding an extra bit of text to the domain name to get it to resolve correctly has already been written into the fundimental archetecture of DNS. It's called a TLD... that's what these things are FOR. Namespace collision is the problem, but a combination of politics and no clear orginzational responsibility is the cause.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Mr connerbd,
You are hereby notified to cease and desist from any further such posts.
As you must be aware, any more discussion of distributed root servers would violate your Windows XP NDA.
Without going into particulars, your public disclosure could jeopardize critical intellectual property that would subject you to immediate and severe litigation that would cause your molars to disintegrate.
I am referring, of course, to the new Windows XP name server cache, which is meant to enhance the end user experience with increases in efficiency by caching frequently desired URLs, including advanced aliasing, such as
that provides a richer experience and the innovation that our customers have come to expect. Of course the same product includes our advanced Pr0nKiller/anti-terrorist MShopping Cart that will be pre-announced by our Chief Software Architect.Good day.
Sternly,
Geoffrey P. Foggbottom, JD
"Provided by the management for your protection."
From the ICANN "one root" doc:
This document reaffirms ICANN's commitment to a single, authoritative public root for the Internet Domain Name System (DNS) and to the management of that unique root in the public interest according to policies developed through community processes.
I bet they'd change their story if it were decided that the "single, authoritative public root" out to be someone other than them.
Although the Internet allows a high degree of decentralized activities, coordination of the assignment function by a single authority is necessary where unique parameter values are technically required.
The phrase "single authority" is never good.
Over the past several years, some private organizations have established DNS roots as alternatives to the authoritative root. Frequently, these "alternative" roots have been established to support for-profit top-level domain registries that have been unable to gain entry into the authoritative root as managed in the public interest by the IANA or ICANN.
'Don't listen to the "other" guys. We're looking out for you.' Yeah, right.
Because these alternative roots substitute insular motives for the community-based processes that govern the management of the authoritative root, their decisions to include particular top-level domains have not been subjected to the same tests of community support and conformance with the public trust.
Sound anything like Microsoft's "Open Source is unsafe" theory?
Got Rhinos?
This has got to be ICANN fud. I haven't read the RFCs, but there's no reason you can't make the "root" system a p2p distributed database. This is not a power grid where economies of scale are proving to be a more efficient way of working than deregulated competition; it's more like a telephone grid.
I guess there's not too much else to say, except for acknowledging that politics will make a mess of things...
/Brian
My opinion on the whole TLD mess is that there should only be one domain.[net|org|com|.*] Instead of having slashdot.org & slashdot.com that whoever registers it has to pick a tld and the rest of the tld's with that domain are unavailable.
.net is most likely a network provider, a .org is an organization, etc. Since you'd pick which tld is going to be most appropriate for you business.
.net tld).
What this would get me is the confidence that I can say a
Also we don't have lawsuits between joeblow.biz & joeblow.com, etc. since they couldn't exist because they'd have a domain clash.
While I'm on a roll (rant), I'd even like it better if you actually had to show you truley belonged in a certain tld (you have to provide network services to be in the
I have no idea how to reverse the mess with all the different organization that are in the mess of having conflicts, but I know it could be implented for any new domains.
Of course that's me being an old curmudgeon
The internet was founded on the idea of routing around damage. How do we route around the cancer that ICANN is becoming?
You really should check out OpenNIC (http://www.opennic.unrated.net/). It's a (seemingly) democratic organization that recognizes the ICANN root, legitimate alternate roots, and its own namespace. What this means is that you can join immediately, your DNS won't be "broken," and you can have a say in how the DNS namespace will be organized. I've only recently signed up, so I don't know yet whether this is the solution, but at least I feel like I'm no longer part of the problem.
P.S. The astute reader will note that I have registered "mozhon.net" in the ICANN root. I can only say that it was done some time ago, before I understood my options. I will not renew it.
----- Nigel Tufnel and David St. Hubbins say: "It's a fine line between clever and stupid."