Vint Cerf Answering Questions on Top-Level Domains

penciling_in writes "Over at CircleID, Vint Cerf is taking question from the community Slashdot-style with regards to top level domains. 'As most readers are no doubt aware, when it comes to the topic of Top-Level Domains (TLDs), Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) takes center stage. From the existing .com and .net TLDs to the newly introduced and future releases, in the past years we witnessed the increasing level of discussions around Top-Level Domains painted -- ever so often -- with political, legal and technical debates. Vint Cerf, Google's VP and Chief Internet Evangelist, who has served as chairman of the board of ICANN since the November of 1999 has accepted CircleID's invitation to directly respond to your questions on the topic. This is your opportunity to have your Top-Level Domain related questions responded by Vint Cerf.'"

Comments

Top level domains for secure software updates

[Debian Troll's Best]

Much attention has been lavished on new top-level domains as a method of differentiating certain types of content. For example, the .biz TLD is aimed at purely business-related sites (unlike the highly diluted .com), and .xxx has been proposed as a 'sandbox' to corral various adult content away from innocent eyes.

Software security is a very hot topic these days. Keeping up with a constant stream of security updates and patches is a tough enough job, but an added layer of risk and complexity is caused by the possibility of forged, hacked or trojaned software updates. If you can't be sure that the web site you are downloading your security patches from is 100% legitimate, how can you be sure that you aren't compromising your system every time you attempt to apply a security patch? A new TLD may be the solution

I envisage a new TLD where only approved security firms and software outfits would be allowed to register domain names. Basically any software download from one of these TLDs would be a guarantee that the patch is an official patch, and free from any potential hacks or 'pwnage'. As an example, I propose the formation of the .deb TLD. Sites able to be registered within the proposed .deb domain would maintain secure repositories of Debian packages, able to be downloaded by Debian users automatically using the apt-get tool. Users could rest assured that packages downloaded from a site in the .deb domain are fully vetted and checked and do not contain a trojan package. Similar TLDs could exist for Windows users (.vbx or .pif).

I look forward to the community's (and Vint Cerf's) comments!

"Cerfing" the net

[deanj]

Vint Cerf made great contributions to the Internet. There's no doubt about that.

A few years ago, I saw an interview where the reporter asked whether the term "Surfing the net" was based on his name. Rather than correct the reporter, he acted coy and suggested that "cerfing the net" could indeed be related to him. Geesh.

Re:my first question would have to be...

[dal20402]

If you want to be technical about it, that site is not for the party, it's for the party's U.S. House caucus. There is a corresponding site at housedemocrats.gov for the donkeys. Thus the sites can have the .gov address; they are in theory performing official business of the relevant representatives...

Dear mr Cerf

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering that you were mostly involved with designing the underlying protocol of whats known as the "internet", do you find it annoying that most people ask you questions about DNS?

-koft

Re:.biz, .info, .museum, .aero - phase out?

[Cadallin]

Really, do you want right wing diploma mills like Bob Jones University to have a .edu??? REALLY??? There needs to be international accredation process possibly, but don't let .edu be polluted!

Re:Hi-Jacking of small states .tld

[SecureTheNet]

Tuvalu (.tv) sold the rights to their domain to verisign. It was not hijacked from them, it was their right and their decision to sell it. They received over $20 million dollars, which is roughly twice their annual gross domestic product. I fail to see how this constitutes being "hijacked."

.cx is run by a community owned non-profit on christmas island. They also run a non-profit isp on the island. How is this hijacking?

Re:Hmm, google VP must have some power then...

[plaxion]

You can type 'google' into the address bar in firefox and get to google. In fact, any non-URI string that you type in the firefox address bar is passed along to google as an "I'm Feeling Lucky" search.

Re:Control

[typical]

I can guess at the answer to that.

It's because Netscape Navigator decided to fill in "www.foobar.com" for "foobar". That meant that if you wanted a short, memorable URL, you needed a .com domain.

A reasonable decision at the time, but with unfortunate consequences down the line.

Also, ".com" is two characters shorter than ".co.us".

Re:A letter hierarchy based scheme for arbitrary T

[Anonymous Coward]

There should be a standard IETF rule, that single letter domains must allow delegation of any unregistered single letter subdomains!

I assure you that squatters would grab anything that looks like a reasonable word within a day.

Better idea: Something where the economy of registering a domain is based on the existance of relatively few high-quality domains instead of a zillion low-quality domains.

Re:my first question would have to be...

[BrynM]

Com TLD is about 75% of the domain names from your source.

If you notice, the example I cited also does not list all TLDs. I cited it to give an idea of how big the DNS database can be. According to this recent quarterly report form Verisign, .com is actually only 47% of the TLD landsacpe after including country codes (37%!) and the other non-previously-cited TLDs.

So, to further my previous example, knowing a domain is .com cuts the number of records to search by more than half. Can't do that with alpha numeric I bet (maybe close for the letter "S" - but I digress).