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Vint Cerf Answering Questions on Top-Level Domains

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the things-you-have-been-dying-to-ask dept.

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.'"

11 of 191 comments (clear)

  1. Re:my first question would have to be... by sketerpot · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The .edu, .gov, and .mil TLDs are pretty strict. Anything with .org is likely to be a non-profit organization. So yes, TLDs do have a point.

  2. Re:my first question would have to be... by AuMatar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    edu, gov, and mil yes. Org is wrong- anyone can register a .org. So while a lot of nonprofits have .org, most .orgs are not nonprofit. YOu're on slashdot.org right now.

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    I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
  3. Re:Pretend I am Jon Postel... by AuMatar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Its pointless. Unless you make it mandatory, there's no reason for a porn site to use it, as many places will block .xxx by default. And making it mandatory is a violation of free speech.

    --
    I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
  4. Hi-Jacking of small states .tld by chris_sawtell · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Why did ICANN permit the hijacking, i.e. Internet identity theft, of the TLDs of small and naive nation-states? .tv, .to, .cx come to mind immediately, I'm sure there are others. IMHO, this is Rampant Imperialism of the worst kind, and is one of many factors which have caused the rest of the world to want to wrest ultimate control of the DNS from the US government. What are you going to do about it in the future? Are you ever going to restore the ownership of .to, .tv and .cx back to Tonga, Tuvalu and Christmas Island where they rightfully belong? Why is it correct and proper to allow out of region servers? There are something between several and many servers which have .nz addresses, yet are domiciled in the US. In other words - are you ever going to clean up these messes which have happened in the past?

    1. Re:Hi-Jacking of small states .tld by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If .to, .tv, and .cx were "hijacked", then so was every other piece of property that was ever sold by its owner to someone else. The governments of those entities sold the rights to those TLDs. If those governments regret it now, they could seize it back at any time (albeit at the cost of destroying their international financial credibility).

      If the adminstrators of .nz wish to allow systems outside of New Zealand to have .nz DNS names, how is this a concern of ICANN or anyone else outside of New Zealand?

      I have cell phone service registered in three foreign countries. I pay for the privilege. Why is it a problem to you that someone calling one of those numbers overseas instead rings a phone located in the USA, especially since I pay for the cost of transferring the call here?

  5. Re:my first question would have to be... by techno-vampire · · Score: 2, Insightful
    is there a real use for having TLDs anymore?

    I take it you have no idea how DNS works. Without TLDs, we'd have to come up with an entirely new way to resolve DNS, and I very much doubt it'd be as quick or as reliable as what we have now.

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  6. Re:Top level domains for secure software updates by MarkByers · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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?

    Cryptographically secure digital signatures solves this problem. If the patch isn't signed by someone / some organisation that you trust, don't install it.

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    I'll probably be modded down for this...
  7. Re:Wiki! by typical · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Why would it be beneficial to introduce an entirely new root-level subtree for storing Wikis?

    I mean, there are many geocities pages out there too, but we don't introduct a .geocities.

    If you have a hierarchical system like DNS, you introduce a new child to the root when none of the existing children are appropriate for storing said item. Wikis seem to be doing okay where they are.

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    Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
  8. The Cost of Domains by FathomIT · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Is it legal for companies like Verisign be allowed to raise the rates on yearly domain renewals? Shouldn't the cost of domain renewal and new domain purchases go down because the cost of maintaining TLDs are less (ie equipment, bandwidth, quantity of subscriberships etc.)?

  9. Re:my first question would have to be... by BrynM · · Score: 2, Insightful
    by techno-vampire (666512):Without TLDs, we'd have to come up with an entirely new way to resolve DNS, and I very much doubt it'd be as quick or as reliable as what we have now.
    by Aardpig (622459):Can you explain why, in detail? Because I disagree with you.
    Not much detail needed. Think of how big a domain name database is. If anything, the TLD can narrow the search within the database immensly. Instead of looking for one item in 62,473,494 you could narrow it down to one in 6,809,016 just by knowing it's .net and not something odd like www.mycompany.myownshinytld. Yes, for this advantage a TLD can be arbitrary (ie: .001, .002, .003 etc.) - but you have to admit the advantage is there. I wonder how many DNS database lookups happen per second worldwide... anyone know where to look up that stat for the rootservers?
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  10. Re:my first question would have to be... by Propaganda13 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Your own argument works against you. Com TLD is about 75% of the domain names from your source. Sorting by the first character of the domain name would give you a much smaller subset. Also think of all the duplicated domain names that would disappear. I'm not saying it would be an easy conversion, but sometimes you just have to tear everything apart and start over to get the best solution.