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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.'"

43 of 191 comments (clear)

  1. Like... by Mrcowcow · · Score: 5, Funny

    If .xxx will see the light of day?

    1. Re:Like... by fr1kk · · Score: 4, Interesting

      As a student who is rather naive to the process of managing domains, what kind of process is involved when it comes to deciding a new top level domain? Also, aside from the given national domains, what is the life cycle of a potential domain that could possibly come to existance, and how do external groups affect the decision (i hate to be cliche, but for example: .xxx domains and the pressure from right wing groups to prevent the domain from allowing a general 'acceptance' of the genre .xxx assumes)? -Blaine

      --
      sig: Playfully doing something difficult, whether useful or not
  2. Hmm, google VP must have some power then... by romiir · · Score: 4, Funny

    Can we have www.google? Thats so much easyer to type then www.google.com
    and while were at it... lets get www./
    (Worst that can happen, they say no...)

    1. Re:Hmm, google VP must have some power then... by eric76 · · Score: 2
      Sooner or later you'll just have to type:

      google://

      That day is here, now, if you use Opera.

      But instead, you just type in 'g' and a space followed by the search terms.

    2. Re:Hmm, google VP must have some power then... by plaxion · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

  3. Am I the only person... by LardBrattish · · Score: 2, Funny
    who thinks Chris McElroy needs a glass of milk & his blanky?

    There's a lot of dissatisfaction there in comment 5 of TFA...

    --
    What are you listening to? (http://megamanic.blogetery.com/)
  4. my first question would have to be... by vena · · Score: 4, Interesting

    is there a real use for having TLDs anymore? no one follows the current rules to any reasonable extent, and it just seems more an artificial way of creating a market sphere, such as how a .com appears more legitimate than a .net for a business regardless of its position in network services. as of now, they provide no discernable organisational structure to speak of imho...

    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.

      --
      I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
    3. Re:my first question would have to be... by jon787 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Which is why one of the political parties has gop.gov

      --
      X(7): A program for managing terminal windows. See also screen(1).
    4. 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.

      --
      Good, inexpensive web hosting
    5. Re:my first question would have to be... by dal20402 · · Score: 2, Informative

      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...

    6. Re:my first question would have to be... by Baloo+Ursidae · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Oh, yeah, .edu is super-strict alright. That's why we have omsi.edu, when the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry isn't a 4-year accredited university (they really should have omsi.museum instead).

      Another local example: Portland Community College is pcc.edu. PCC isn't a 4-year school, so it properly should be cc.portland.or.us

      --
      Help us build a better map!
    7. 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?
      --
      US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
    8. 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.

    9. Re:my first question would have to be... by BrynM · · Score: 2, Informative
      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).

      --
      US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
    10. Re:my first question would have to be... by advocate_one · · Score: 3, Funny

      now this is stupid...they should be gop.gov.us and housedemocrats.gov.us... you Yanks are not the world government yet...

      --
      Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
  5. TLD abuse. by grub · · Score: 2, Funny


    What can we do about people like Rodona Garst and her abuse of the .cx domain? She robbed the world of a valuable resource.

    Thank you.

    --
    Trolling is a art,
  6. Top level domains for secure software updates by Debian+Troll's+Best · · Score: 2, Informative
    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!

    1. 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.

      --
      I'll probably be modded down for this...
  7. Wiki! by Aquatopia17 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    How about a .wiki TLD? It's just crazy enough to work, considering the countless wikis to be found out there. Wiki Wiki Wiki!

    --
    Don't sweat the petty things. Don't pet the sweaty things. --Stephen J. Simmons
    1. 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.

      --
      Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
  8. Pretend I am Jon Postel... by RedLeg · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Pretend that I am Jon Postel, still alive, and I have cornered you an the hallway at IETF.

    Defend to me, on grounds that you know I (Jon Postel) would accept, the decision to kill the .XXX domain.

    Remember (and I am not reminding you, sir) that registration in that domain is not mandatory for ANYONE.

    Yes, we've met (at IETF), and no, I will not tell you who I am.

    --Red

    1. 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?
    2. Re:Pretend I am Jon Postel... by blair1q · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

      That's fallacious.

      Any porn site will have a .xxx presence simply to improve its exposure to searches.

      If sites block them, that saves the porn sites that are wholly within .xxx from having to implement those silly "click here if you are under 18" portal windows.

      Frankly, there's no reason grounded in anything other than sheer bloody-mindedness to deny any TLD the light of day. It's just a part of a string used to address a worldwide table of IP associations, and the rest of the string is free-form and totally unrestrictable (except as to character set and length).

  9. "Cerfing" the net by deanj · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  10. 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?

    2. Re:Hi-Jacking of small states .tld by SecureTheNet · · Score: 4, Informative

      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?

      --
      SecureThe.Net - Practical Resources for Securing Systems
  11. Kind of not totally on topic, but must be asked... by AtariDatacenter · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Why did you leave MCI just before its acquisition by Verizon was completed? What do you see the future holding for Verizon?

  12. .biz, .info, .museum, .aero - phase out? by Animats · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Is it time to phase out some TLDs as unsuccessful?
    • .BIZ The Internet's equivalent of a strip mall in a bad neighborhood. No major company has its primary domain in .biz. Its reputation is that bad. It's used mostly by spammers, scammers, and other low-lifes.
    • .INFO There's some use of .info, but not much. Is it worth the trouble?
    • .MUSEUM The number of museums in this TLD is so tiny there's a single page that lists all of them. Yet most of the big names in museums aren't there.
    • .AERO Supposedly for the aviation industry, it's almost totally unused. The registrar has put up redirect pages for the major airport codes, such as LAX, but many of those are broken or redirect to the wrong page.

    When considering any new TLDs, it's worth looking at how these TLDs, from ICANN's first wave of expansion, worked out.

    1. Re:.biz, .info, .museum, .aero - phase out? by Cadallin · · Score: 2, Informative

      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!

  13. Seriously by utdpenguin · · Score: 2, Funny

    What the hell kind of name is "Vint Cerf?"

    --
    In Soviet Russia you dant have to put up with these crappy jokes
  14. Control by flyingember · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Given that top level domains were initially created to give a sense of order to the internet, before user@schoolname was more the rule, it seem .com would ONLY be given to commercial groups, .net to networks, etc. I was reading RFC 1480 and it looks like even as late as 1993 a restructure of the US domain system could have been created along the lines of how foreign countries do it. bbc.co.uk would thus be a british site, and bbc.co.us could be bbc americas domain. Instead we have a hodgepodge of international mixes. Thus my question is, why all the chaos in how they were assigned?

    1. Re:Control by typical · · Score: 2, Informative

      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".

      --
      Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
  15. MCI by 1310nm · · Score: 3, Interesting

    As a fellow at MCI (please correct me if I'm wrong), what was your day-to-day activity like? I grok things as far up the technological chain as network engineering, but I never had insight into the work of a visionary at MCI.

    BTW, it's great to be rid of the MCI name now that we're Verizon Business, and I wish you luck at Google.

  16. Dylan Edwards? by shoolz · · Score: 2, Funny

    I want to register clownpenis.fart

    Will that be possible in the coming years?

  17. Dear mr Cerf by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    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

  18. 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.)?

  19. Firefox quick searches by typical · · Score: 2, Interesting

    With Firefox:

    Step 1: Type "google" into URL bar. Watch as www.google.com appears (thanks to a Google I Feel Lucky search).

    Step 2: Right click on the search text field, and choose "Add a Keyword for this Search".

    Step 3: Enter "gg" into the Keyword field in the dialog that appears (and whatever you want in the Name field).

    Step 4: You can now type "gg foobar" to Google for "foobar".

    Konqueror does something similar with "gg:", not "gg ".

    I believe that Firefox ships default with "google" as a Google search keyword (though it's been a long time since I've done a clean installation, so I'm not sure), and I believe that "wp foobar" now does a Wikipedia search for "foobar" by default.

    If you want to have a quick search on Google Images with SafeSearch disabled (*without* having to log in -- yes, it is possible, even if Google makes it non-obvious how to do this), bookmark the following link and give it a keyword.

    --
    Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
  20. Forget Top Level Domains, Tell Us About 2nd Level by Schlemphfer · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I've noticed that anytime a domain expires, it doesn't go back into the unused pool and become available to someone else. Most or all of the expired domain names get instantly sucked up the moment they expire by companies nobody's ever heard of that (I suppose) have contracts with the top domain registrars. I suppose this amounts to thousands or tens of thousands of domain names vanishing from circulation each year; domains that I have to think are essentially ransomed off by these bulk buyers, one by one, to anyone who really, really wants it.

    I've got to think that, when purchased in bulk, it costs pennies, or perhaps tenths or even hundredths of pennies, in actual administrative costs to keep these domains registered each year.

    Since costs of maintaining registration for expired domains can approach nothing, are we at risk of these re-registration companies eventually having permanent ownership of nearly every domain a person might think to register? Might it not be in the public interest to have a minimum annual registration fee per domain (say, three dollars), to help ensure that domains aren't held in perpetuity by speculators?

    --
    I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
  21. Re:Wiki!.. Forget Wiki, think ".blog" by asliarun · · Score: 2, Interesting

    IMHO, a ".blog" TLD makes so much more sense. There are millions of weblogs anyway, and they're only growing at an exponential rate. This categorization will also, in one fell swoop, largely alleviate the trackback link problem that so many search engines are facing, and allow spiders/bots to easily differentiate between a weblog and a regular content/news site.

  22. Re:Wiki!.. Forget Wiki, think ".blog" by typical · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I dunno. I know that you're thinking of a personal journal kept online by people, but consider that Slashdot could be considered a "blog", and that there is increasing use of corporate blogs. The DNS hierarchy is slow to adapt -- once we move to a new TLD, we're stuck with it for a while. The nature of what a blog even is, in the presence of new systems for social networking and so forth, is rapidly changing.

    I'm not sure that search engines might be able to do a better job of identifying blogs than blog authors do, if there is indeed a link problem (for example, Groklaw is very different from a personal blog), then I would suggest that this is better addressed by the search engine maintainers.

    For that matter, I'm not even certain that blogs are really over-weighted -- they seem to often be up-to-date and do a good job of spreading useful information.

    Also, some sites are not dedicated blogs -- why stuff a blog in a different domain? I mean, sure, Verisign would love this (since they'd be able to rent additional domains), but ultimately I'm not sure that storing different content in different domains fits with the existing DNS scheme well.

    --
    Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.