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Verisign Recommended to Keep .com & .net

Posted by samzenpus on from the it's-mine-now dept.

An Anonymous SAIC Employee writes "The 'independent' company hired by ICANN to advise them on who should run the .com and .net registry has recommended that Verisign (fact sheet) should be chosen to continue to run the registry. Is it any surprise? Telcordia was owned by SAIC (Fact Sheet) during the time the study was conducted. SAIC bought Telcordia (fact sheet) (then Bellcore) in Nov. 1997 and sold it March 15, 2005. Network Solutions was bought by SAIC in 1995 and sold in 2000. Also, Telcordia worked with Verisign on the ENUM project. Is the fox guarding the hen house?"

6 of 147 comments (clear)

  1. Oh no! by SteelV · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "VeriSign's clumsy, unilateral attempt to hijack the DNS space through its SiteFinder wildcard service (and its goofy FUD-filled management statements since) proves that profiteering decisions can -- and do -- endanger the Internet more than any hacker or computer attack. It also proves once again that the Internet community -- ISPs, developers, engineers, and other experts -- can come together to effectively and quickly counter corporate, not just criminal, attacks on the network infrastructure - and we owe them our thanks."

    http://padawan.info/web/verisign_bad_citizen_of_th e_net.html

    Why don't they get that diversity is a *Good* thing? Switch it up every few years, to keep these guys on their toes and not let them get too comfortable/corrupt.

    1. Re:Oh no! by TheKidWho · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Sort of interesting, how about making it democratic? Vote for the company to do it every 2 years.

  2. Whats all the fuss about? by FiReaNGeL · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Last time I checked, .com and .net domains costed a whole 10 bucks to register.

    Why all the fuss about who should administer these? Is it doing any difference if it's Big Corporation A or B?

    --
    Eureka Science News - automatically updated
  3. Does it have to be one company? by mi · · Score: 4, Interesting
    It currently works on the hierarchical basis, right? So all .com must be under the same "roof".

    With little effort, the system can be modified to ask a different set of "root" servers based on some simple formula on the domain-name. Like, sum up all letters of the name and % by the number of competitors.

    Then we'll be able to measure the efficiency of each contender -- number of failures, average response time, &c. and compare them.

    Or am I totally wrong? Any DNS gurus here?

    --
    In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
  4. I don't get it by Flibberdijibbit · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Why would ICANN, the org that flogged Verisign over the Sitefinder fiasco, hire a company with ties to Verisign? I don't get it. The biggest problem getting anyone to notice is that the vast majority of the Internet population simply saw Sitefinder as a page that came up when a domain was typed in wrong. What most people don't know is that *every* unknown request for a domain was forwarded to Verisign's servers. Most disturbing in my mind (maybe because I'm an email admin) is SMTP connections went through to their servers. And if I remember correct, they accepted the entire conversation. Headers and message body. They then returned a 5xx level NDR back to the sender. They 'say' they weren't collecting data, but come on, at the very least, they had access to know good sender addresses. What corp wouldn't keep track of that goldmine of information??

  5. Re:Cowardice by geminidomino · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It could just be that the whistleblower doesn't want to be outed just yet...