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ICANN Won't Get DNS Root Servers

daria42 writes "The US Department of Commerce has reversed its original decision on the Internet's root DNS servers, which would have eventually seen them pass into the hands of ICANN. While the original decision would have seen ICANN take full responsibility after it met a number of conditions, the new declaration means Commerce would keep that control, regardless of whether and when those conditions are met. It is possible that some countries could withdraw support from ICANN, and this decision even opens up the gate for a separate DNS system to be established outside the US's control."

6 of 343 comments (clear)

  1. This Is Being Played Different Ways All Over by DanielMarkham · · Score: 5, Interesting

    From CNN -- "US keeps control over internet computers"
    From the Brits -- "US appears to affirm its authority on the internet"
    From the Canadians -- "US to control internet traffic"
    India -- "US won't cede monopoly on the internet"
    Seems like the same story has several different headlines, and to the uniformed eye some of them in conflict (yes. I know you can make the case they're not all that different. But monopoly on the internet it isn't). It would be nice if the people writing the stories understood what a root server was. Might make for a more informed public, you know?
    Check out "SarBox And The World Of Tomorrow"

  2. Change the DNS system! by Arthur+B. · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Come on where's the D in DNS if we need central authority... Crypto has gone a long way since! Some authorities could sign pairs of DNS + IPs and have these distributed anywhere. For exemple I could chose to trust organization foo and bar to provide me safe a safe DNS. Requiring coincidence of two unrelated authorities would marginalize the risks of dns poisoning. The authority don't even need bandwith for that, they could be goolgle, yahoo, ibm, gnu, ms etc. As for who decides who gets a domain name, except for specific extensions (gov, countries etc) this should be open to anyone, and basically registering would simply consist in referring one's domain name to major authorities before someone else does.

    --
    \u262D = \u5350
  3. Re:Redundancy is good by julesh · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'd hardly call 4 in California, 4 in Virginia, 2 in Maryland, 2 in Europe and 1 in Japan "well distributed". "Clustered in a few places" would be more accurate.

  4. Are we all over reacting? by bemenaker · · Score: 3, Interesting
    From reading the gov't release, it sounds like the US is trying to maintain physical control over the boxes, but is still handing off all administration and support to ICANN. Am I not understanding the report correctly. I read the gov't release, and not the news statements on this issue.

    I have long felt that the internet, while created by the US, should evolve into a complete international body. That ICANN should take over all authority of the internet. Unfortunately, this will bring the same level of difficulty as the UN has, but to a lesser degree.

    I have long felt that as we evolve, (socially, and politically), the idea that all of the earth will eventually fall under one global gov't will happen. I also feel that this won't happen until long after space travel becomes a normal mundane thing. Systems like the internet, will not only help bring this, but are an essential part of this.

    Keeping with that mentality, the internet needs to serve everyone's interest, and to do so, it must be controlled by an open body made up of an international representation.

  5. Re:On the fence by defMan · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Good idea, i switched my own caching nameserver to it. It still runs of US servers but we'll see what happens.

  6. Re:Against Concept of the Internet? by mrogers · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Actually the backbone routers are far more of a liability - take down the DNS root servers and caches would keep things ticking over for a few days. Take down a couple of backbone routers and the resulting BGP storm might take down the internet...