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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.'"

22 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 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. 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 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.

    5. 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.
  4. 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
  5. 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?
  6. 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
  7. 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?

  8. .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.

  9. 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?

  10. 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.

  11. 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.)?

  12. 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?