CentralNic Enables uk.com Wildcard DNS

JamesS writes "It appears that CentralNic has enabled wildcard DNS matching. Many Slashdot readers will remember the backlash aimed at Verisign the last time it did this nearly two years ago to the day, introducing SiteFinder to the world at large."

Comments

TDLA wildcard

[slashnutt]

How about starting something useful Instead of wildcarding DNS why doesn't one of these venders wildcard TDLAs making them optional. What's that - you get more money by selling N domain names where N = TDLAs. Yeah it would be hard to wildcard TDLAs but after a few years it wouldn't matter, as the DNS names would become the selling point more than TDLAs. I guess the system could default to .com then .org or it could just show you the possible combination and learn which is the most popular based on your country or something. Regardless of the grainy details but I just would like to see the \.[.]{2-3}$ go away.

Choose and Win

[Doc Ruby]

These registrars were handed a giant chunk of value, ownership registration on our 21st Century language - Internet names - along with the trust of the public that their answers to queries would be "objective", not reflecting some local vested interest. Like which company paid them to return their link. They're "leveraging synergies" between DNS queries and advertising customers. But one person's "synergy" is another person's "conflict of interest".

Real wildcard queries return all of the matching items, not just the one preferred by the database. These registrars do have a synergic value to offer, as they have info about "close matches". Wildcard queries should offer "disambiguation" replies of all matches, DNS-wide, not just those in the local registrar. And even if they make money placing "sponsored" responses, they should have to actually match the query criteria, not just an arbitrary association bought for money. Sponsored links should appear in a column alongside "real" links, like Google adWords, so they're not in the way of retrieving the real responses. And some proceeds from the sponsorship should be returned to the community from which the system derives most of its value: registrants and queriers. Probably just fund the IETF or IANA, which serves the community equitably. The whole system should be optional, leaving queries to default to the original "failure mode", where null responses return only an error message, not a list of "maybe you wanted" responses.

These servics are probably inevitable. And they're probably useful, in returning some financing to the organizations that keep the Internet running. And letting them put what amounts to advertising into the error responses gives a revenue stream to DNS servers. That offers incentive for more servers, which would make the system more reliable, more distributed - competition might even produce inherently valuable innovations, not just these capitalist innovations. But we've got to demand they do it right. If the Internet DNS layer becomes just a smartass "TV Guide", as "brought to you by" takes over our seamless navigation, we might as well all go back to watching TV.

Censored?

[Hatta]

It's interesting, fdsagfdwagdsa.uk.com leads me to the uk.com website. But fuckyou.uk.com and fuckoff.uk.com can not be found? They're not just banning fuck*.uk.com though, cause fuckmeintheass.uk.com goes right to the uk.com site.

It seems they know this is going to be an unpopular move.

Down with TLDs!

[RAMMS EIN]

I am with you there! TLDs only serve to cause confusion. Was that website .com, .org, .co.uk, or .org.uk? And some people will happily exploit that confusion by setting up their website on the same domain with a different TLD. So then you'll have to buy your domain on all likely other TLDs, too. Yech!

And what's it all good for? I've seen non-profit organizations with .com names, for-profits with .org names, Dutch sites with .nu names, etc. etc. The supposed relation between TLD and function doesn't hold, nor does the supposed relation between TLD and country. And nor could it, what with country TLDs and function TLDs in the same namespace...

People have told me that TLDs help the system to function, because the hierarchy allows better load distribution. I call bull on that one. Almost everybody wants the .com anyway. You'll have to solve the load problem for the .com TLD, and once you've done that it's not that much harder to throw the rest of the TLDs on that same system.

So, eliminate the confusion and buy my pure names today! How does "theregister" sound as the name of your website, instead of "theregister.co.uk"? Only drawback is that nobody's browser actually supports these new names.

And while we're at it, lets also do away with the inverted order crap. What's with the more specific name going in front of the less specific ones in the DNS name, and the more specific name going _after_ the less specific name in the rest of the URL? And what's with the dot as a separator? /less/to/more/specific/all/the/way!