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Dotless Top Level Domains?
nodnarb1978 writes "As reported on Yahoo, a Dutch company called UnifiedRoot wants to offer top level domains without extensions. For instance, just typing slashdot would bring up this site, instead of slashdot.org. UnifiedRoot is careful to differentiate itself from New.net, but it seems their similar business tactics leave plenty of room for comparison. Another bone of contention is the price: UnifiedRoot wants $1000USD up front for a registration, with an additional $240 yearly renewal. With domain abandonments higher than ever, is this a solution looking for a problem? And would anybody really want to place control of entire TLDs in the hands of one private company?"
For instance, just typing slashdot would bring up this site, instead of slashdot.org.
:-)
This is just how it works in Firefox, with the help of Google, already today.
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one of the guys that I worked with in the 90s always thought that they should just drop TLDs or make is to that everyone could register their own TLDs. I kinda agree with him now. It sure would solve the problem with people registering .com, .net and .org and people going to .com when the address is .org, etc.
I see your point about the money and there is no way I want to see control of TLD's in the hands of a single, private company.
.org and .net minutes after you register .com. The worst someone can do to you is misspell yours slightly in hopes people will somehow get to them instead of you through a typo (like "micorsoft.com", I hate these jerks).
But the concept behind the flat top level namespace actually solves the problem you speak of. Imagine, as a small company, coughing up a reasonable initial and annual fee to register a single domain. No worries that someone will come along and grab
IMHO this concept has pros and cons but the flat namespace would be a boon to the little guy when it comes to getting domains that reflect a company's image without having to register 42 of them.
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Except that would be a trademark violation.
That argument only works if its $1000 to register it, if the market opened up and the ICANN obstruction was removed, why would it cost more to register flights.schipol.com instead of flights.schipol?
I think MS could easily do this themselves if they wanted to, without the need for a third party. If they made a similar system and auto-updated everyone's version of IE to be compatabile with it, they'd have 70%-80% of web users able to use their system and so quite a strong selling point for potential customers. Alternative browser makers would then probably be forced to follow (or risk their users being unable to access a substantial number of sites), reinforcing MS's position further.
Compare that to the service of the company in TFA - from the UnifiedRoot.com website, it seems like in order to use their services your ISP needs to have configured UnifiedRoot TLDs or each individual user needs to change their DNS settings. I don't know how many percent of web users those conditions cover, but it's gotta be pretty tiny in comparision to what MS could do.
Of course, if MS did do it they could be accused of abusing their monoply (kinda similar to the Verisign Sitefinder thing a while back), but then that hasn't stopped them before...
Oddly enough, DNS does use a fair bit of bandwidth (~13Gbps at the root servers based on numbers in [1]). Adding a new TLD involves adding an entry to these root servers. The root servers already have a hard time answering queries for ~300 TLD's that are quite cachable (60-85% are queries that should have been cached but are not [1]). Adding thousands of additional TLD's which are harder to cache only exuberates this problem. Add to the fact that the root servers are a central point of failure, and represent a big target for DDoS; they require a lot of extra provisioning and security. Medling with the DNS root is no laughing matter.
R oot/dmr.pdf
Now I don't know how these guys came up with their cost numbers, and whether or not they are justifiable, but I am pretty sure that adding a DNS TLD will cost them a fair bit.
[1] http://www.caida.org/outreach/papers/2001/DNSMeas
Jesus Tom, this is twice in a week I've seen you get moderated up for blatantly false statements on Slashdot. As saikatguha266 rightfully pointed out, operating the root DNS servers requires a massive amount of bandwidth and has high operating costs. In addition to that, DNS queries are already recursive, so I don't understand what your point is. People who don't even understand how the DNS protocol works, and try to assert that a fundamental component of how it works--recursion--isn't used, shouldn't criticize it.
You're not insightful, you're suggesting making them waste even more money than is already wasted. As someone else pointed out (http://www.bind9.net/dnshealth/), many DNS servers are already improperly configured and as a result, are bombarding the root DNS servers with tons of unnecessary queries. It's a huge waste of bandwidth and resources. If DNS servers were configured properly, respecteced DNS TTLs, cached queries properly, a huge burden would be taken off the root servers, and they could actually lower their prices.
What if you DON'T have an external domain? Say... on my home network I want to use my own DNS, but since I don't intend to host anything I don't need an external domain. \