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ICANN Announces DNS Registrars
As many of you know, today is the day that ICANN is supposed to
announce the 5 companies that will be competing with NSI for
registering domain names.
You can see the
announcements here...
except that the server is bogged.
Update: 04/21 04:16 by CT : Here is the List:America Online ,
CORE (Internet Council of Registrars),
France Telecom/Oléane,
Melbourne IT,
and register.com. You can see more on ICANN if it
wasn't so slow.
anyone wanna explain how this directly affects me, the proverbial End User and anonymous coward?
/. username and password written down at home somewhere
Will my DNS server numbers change? will i have alternatives to my DNS servers? will i need or want alternatives?
will i be able to register a domain name with someone other than the InterNIC? will the someone other be cheaper? is that all?
will there suddenly be five competing, seperate, warring domain name factions i'll have to remember which to type every URL i use into? Should i start writing down the raw IP numbers of every website that matters to me, just in case the domain name system goes all to hell?
will this even affect me? will it affect anyone?
the ICANN press release doesn't seem to answer those questions, or for that matter say much of anything meaningful. someone please explain this to me.
--Anonymous coward
who has a
and can't remember it
and is not at home right now
One thing that REALLY has to change: registered domain names shouldn't go live until they are PAID FOR!
This whole thing of squattters running scripts to re-register thousands of domain names every 90 days without ever paying for them, while still putting up a webpage with "this domain name for sale" has got to stop!
As for the speculators who do pay the fee and still sit on the names, there needs to be a total ban on the private resale of domain names. This is a real problem and we need a measure like this to stop it.
There are several issues that worry me here.
Firstly and most importantly the fact that NSI continue to run the master database. Whatever they may say about competing fairly with their new counterparts they have an underlying advantage; users are likely to think that the company running the system is somehow *better* than the rest.
Secondly has been some confusion recently about the status of domain names. Are they property or not ? This has implications here as well. If we treat them as property, as a judge did recently, then renewal fees would surley have to be paid to the original registry, in effect you are renting the property from NSI at the moment. However if they are not property but a license to use the domain then any registry could renew it. This, I think, will have the most impact on the ability of the other registries to compete with NSI.
Finally what happens when someone ceases to use a domain ? or when someone sells a domain ? None of these issues appear to have been addressed. Can any registry sell a domain that has lapsed from another registry ? Can a company sell a domain and do the transfer to a different registry ? If not NSI have a lock in on all domains registered to this point.
If any of these issuse have been addressed I'd be interested in a URL.
Waitaminute, this is AOL, home of the 19-plus-hour national outage and the busy-signal/refund fiasco. Are we all sure we want AOL in this business, given their track record for being hacked, downtime, spamming, and other stuff? And while I'm thinking about it, how do we know these other companies won't be any better? NSI is selling off the contact information so we can all get spammed and phone calls and junk mail? Shouldn't we force the hands of the domain name registries to agree to a "Acceptable Use/Privacy Policy"? Something like "we will not sell your information without your personal approval. Check here to give us your approval to sell your information..." would be easy for them to do, but noooo, they gotta make even *more* money. Unless something like this gets done, they'll shaft you like NSI has and is going to again.
Where is AlterNIC in all this? I remember them pressing the issue a long time ago. Especially Eugene Kashpureff redirecting internic.net, going into hiding, and eventually turning himself in. Anyone know what's up with AlterNIC? [peer@www null]$ nslookup alter.nic Server: www.lilithfair.org Address: 208.13.14.4 Name: alter.nic Address: 206.191.128.47 Good old alternate TLDs...
America Online
CORE (Internet Council of Registrars)
France Telecom/Oléane
Melbourne IT
register.com
Take a look at http://www.icann.org/icann-pr21apr99.htm
-- I doubt, therefore I might be.
That will get some competition going. Probably will lower the price of a domain name a lot.
:) I can even tolerate having AT&T, MS, and AOL in the mix as long as there are a bunch of others to force them to keep clean.
This sig is false.
For example, over the past six months or so, I've been involved in a discussion between representatives of a number of major international corporations, mostly in the financial services sector, who are considering building a kind of a next-generation Internet, co-operatively owned and operated (similar to the UK's NIC), based upon IPv6, with all of the advantages that entails. The Project is referred to as the Grid.
From what I've heard in the meetings I've attended, they plan to build an intial backbone around the world, centred and controlled from London, linking to Dublin, Paris, Frankfurt, Berlin, Moscow, Hong Kong, Tokyo and a couple of cities in the United States. It would initially only be used by the companies involved in initially setting it up, but, later, anyone would be allowed to join and become equal shareholders in the non-profit company which will own and operate the backbone (and the DNS system), as long as they pay their share of the cost of maintaining the backbone. Any profits would be ploughed back into improving the network.
The technical details aren't really an issue at the moment. One of the committee invited me along after hearing me speak at a conference and I've been advising them as to what's possible and what's not.
It's all quite interesting. Whether it'll actually pan out is another matter, but their reasons for wanting to do this (dissatisfaction with the current ownership and administration of the Internet and with it's security) aren't exactly unreasonable.
Funnily enough, the main things they end up discussing in their meetings are related to the administration of Grid - i.e. how the administrating company would be set up and owned, whether all the stakeholders should have an equal vote or not, how to ensure that no one company or organisation can gain too much power, etc. They're not all that worried about the technical side, because it's all pretty much possible - or rather will be when IPv6-capable networking equipment and operating systems become available.
It's a lot of fun sitting there and watching them all get into seriously deep legal discussions and so on... It's even more fun imagining the upheaval that will occur when it launches.
The Dodger
Hacker & International Network Architect
I guess they will cover the .me2 domains...!
--
"May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"
This whole issue really pisses me off and I agree that something should be done about it. These speculators and squatters are a major cause of all the troubles with the domain name registration process. The TLD registration service is like an institution for the public good. We should do everything possible to preclude people from profiting off it through abusing the system. I propose they adopt the following rules:
.02 anyway
1. Domain names may not be transfered. They may only be cancelled.
2. Upon cancellation, the domain name must sit "dead" for a period of around 6 months.
If we do this, the speculators would have a difficult time in convincing buyers that they would be guaranteed to actually be able to register the domain name after the speculator drops it.
If we combine this with domains going live upon receipt of payment and a maximum of 30 days holding time before receiving payment, I think we can make it much less profitable for speculators.
If the need to legitimately transfer domain names is to great for this kind of solution, perhaps there could be a minimum domain holding time before transfers are processed or they could be approved by some impartial body. Approval by committee would be prone to abuse too though.
That's my
. . .we have 29 more registrars:
9NetAvenue; A Technology Company; Active ISP;
Alldomains.com; All West Communications;
American Domain Name Registry; AT&T;
Domain Direct; DomainRegistry.com; eNom, Inc.;
InfoAvenue; InfoNetworks; InfoRamp;
Interactive Telecom Network; Interdomain;
Internet Domain Registrars; interQ Incorporated;
MS Intergate; NameSecure.com; Name.Space Inc.;
NetBenefit; NetNames; Nominalia;
Port Information System AB; RCN;
Telepartner AS; Verio; Virtual Internet; and WebTrends
If your Domain is about to expire, can you renew it through one of the other newer competitors? Or Does NSI have the billions of names already registered locked in?
RB
Look, as much as we like to bash AOL for empowering the idiots of the world to have internet access, they are a business and must make money. AOL does much more than the AOL we know such as ICQ, Netscape, and corporate Internet services. Usually, when they enter a market, prices drop. Service from AOL isusually so-so to good, but DNS names aren't maintnence intensive unless you move your servers around every day. AOL might be good for this.
RB