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The Internet

ICANN Announces DNS Registrars 108

Posted by CmdrTaco from the todays-the-day dept.
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.
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ICANN Announces DNS Registrars More

ICANN Announces DNS Registrars

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  • AOL does PPP (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    AOL is beta testing their PPP access. Soon they may release it for more than just beta testers. This would allow you to connect through AOL without the clunky client software. I have not beta tested this at all, so I cannot comment any further. I connect through my ISP and pay a cut rate for AOL service, they charge alot more if you connect through their access numbers, especially on this payment plan. Anyone interested in checking out the PPP should apply to be a beta tester at aol keyword BETA. AOL has it's downsides, but I guess that's the price you pay for being so popular in a booming industry - growing pains.

    I look forward to all of these registrars.. If AOL has the best prices, they will get my business. Religious issues aside.

  • Here's Why! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I see no justification for this. Why should we restrict private transactions simply because some people are making a profit off of them.

    It's not an anti-capitalism issue. We should restrict these private transactions of domain names because speculators have made it nearly impossible for legit users to reasonably get a decent domain name. The fact that this network was built with tax money means that areas for abuse like this are appropriate for regulation.

    Although this might deter some speculators, it would also make it impossible for companies who logically out to have a given domain name from getting it.

    As it is now, it's almost already impossible to get a domain name because so many have been snapped up by speculators. By disallowing private sale, you take away their incentive, and it would make many more domain names available.

    I think another part of the problem is that .com has become the extension of choice. The only suggestion I can make is to add a bunch of new extensions like .biz and .inc to trivialize the value of .com

  • how does this affect me? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    anyone wanna explain how this directly affects me, the proverbial End User and anonymous coward?

    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 /. username and password written down at home somewhere
    and can't remember it
    and is not at home right now

  • A word on cybersquatters and speculators (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 21, 1999 @10:04AM (#1922966)
    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.
  • Rocket Boy wrote:

    AOL does much more than the AOL we know such as ICQ, Netscape, and corporate Internet services.

    All of which were purchased (from Mirablis, Netscape and Compuserve respectively) rather than anything AOL actually did.


    Usually, when they enter a market, prices drop.

    In the computer industry, usually prices drop, I have yet to see any cause and effect relationship between AOL and industry pricing, particularly since they usually charge above the average for whatever services they offer.


    AOL might be good for this.

    Perhaps, if they don't require somthing like AOL's special DNS client software to set up your system. They do have a bad tendency to require their own proprietary software.
  • Well, I'm not too happy with two of those.

    AOL is some weird online-service which was
    profiteur on the internet, sucking content while
    not providing any (except for _their_ memebers)
    for some years. It's not the guys you'd put
    it charge for something like that.

    The second one is France Telecom. Well, that's
    some bureaucrats. They're not anymore part of
    the french state for not so many years, still
    have all those people... Furthermore, their
    own internet-connectivity (as they provide for
    providers) used to be slow and frequently
    mis-routed...From Zürich to Zürich by Paris..
    Also not the guys you want to run your network.
  • That's how it used to be. They used to actually enforce the "rules." Now, the NSI site actually tells you to register the .org and .net if you get a .com Now it's just blatantly about the money. They want you to spend as much as possible, screw what's right.
  • Posted by 747SP:

    Grrr! Enjoying a private, self-serving and corrupt monopoly in Australia... Looks like they're keen to take the same techniques to the world at large!

  • The only way it will work is to contracturally enforce the meanings of the new TLDs. Some enforceable ones would be .per (personal must be an actual person), .npc (non-profit corperation, must present proof of np status) etc. An additional benefit is that the contract itself could probably be used as proof against trademark infringement.

  • Even if NetSol ends up being marginally cheaper than a competitor (from what I've read, at 9$/year, that's pretty freakin' cheap, but the other registrars shouldn't be that much more), I'd urge everyone to think hard about staying with NetSol.

    If important people notice the way everyone flocks *away* from NetSol despite their possibly lower prices, it might make them take note of NetSol's poor ethical practices in the past with respects to internic.net and whois, and hopefully, similar incidents will not be repeated by other companies in similar positions.
  • AFAIK, if InterNIC won't let you simply transfer your domain over when you request it, you can always:

    a. Cancel your registration with InterNIC and re-register the domain with another registrar; or

    b. Wait until your InterNIC domain registration expires and re-register it with another registrar.

    Of course, unless you have prior arrangements with said registrars, there might be a sort of race condition during which any Joe Bloe might come along and register your domain while you aren't looking. I've known people that set up minute-by-minute cron jobs performing whois lookups on particular domains and setting off all sorts of alarms, etc., when the domain comes up unregistered. It's usually re-registered shortly thereafter, oftentimes to the dismay of the original holder.

    You snooze you lose.
  • I agree. What's the difference between some guy going to a concert and buying up all of the tickets only to sell them at ten times the price at the door and these domain gimps going up and buying all of the domains they think are interesting and re-selling them?

    IMO, this should be made "illegal" at the top level, namely ICANN. The registrars should be asked to enforce the rule and those found scalping domains should simply lose them and perhaps be barred from registering domains in the future.

    If this practice is ignored or even legitimized, what's to stop our friendly new registrars from doing the same thing? Is there a rulebook someplace that states what the registrars can and cannot do with respects to their new power over domain names? I'm going to go read the site here shortly, so if it's talked about there, you don't have to respond...
  • No new DNS information, no silly things to remember when typing in URL's. We may end up with a few more TLD's in the future, but that's irrelevant.

    The only thing will change is that you will have more people from which to purchase domain names, and yes, the prices will be significantly lower than what NetSol is charging now (from what I've read, almost a tenth of the cost).

    Most people will never know the difference, nor do they really need to.
  • Companies sell name address lists in order to make money. NSI's list is worth a small fortune since it is going to have a high density of system administrators and technical managers (ie people who spend gobs of money on computing/networking systems).

    I would happily check a privacy button, even if it had a, say, $25 fee to remain publically unlisted (much like many phone companies).
  • News.com has an article covering it [news.com]. I agree with their analysis: NSI's going to have a de facto monopoly because of their past governance of the InterNIC, and the fact that, regardless of the new state of competition, NSI gets to skim off the others' fees (they still have to pay NSI to maintain the database).

    -Virgil
    --
  • You said what I was going to say!
  • ...and mentioning it on Slashdot will help? :-)
  • Cool... having an Australian company (one in Melbourne, no less) could make domain payments a wee bit cheaper for me.

    Will these companies be handling .org? If so, will it be possible to transfer an existing .org from Network Solutions to MelbourneIT?
  • theforcewillbewithu2.com for $100,000? For some reason my reaction is one of amusement, albeit of the sort usually elicited by Darwin Awards.

    As for banning it, I'm afraid that no law will ever prevent fools from parting with their money, and helpful third parties from assisting them in fulfilling this desire.
  • Trading of domains which have been paid for should be allowed; there is no reason to impose such a draconian ban on exchange of possessions. And if some idiot with too much money wants to blow a couple hundred thousand of their own cash on tooc00l4u.net or something, that's their business.

    As for squatting, that's a different matter altogether; it's more akin to fraud than anything else.
  • The Earth is a public resource, belonging to all of humanity. Land is not owned, but licensed, very similar to the way an airwave frequency is licensed by the FCC.

    The airwaves and the land belogn to everyone, and those who abuse it should lose their license to use that frequency/plot.


    Interesting concept, but a little out of touch with reality.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • if it's them, it'll be the more expensive one! France Telecom are "theft", all they want are your money! when you call your neighbour you have to pay, when you connect to the net via dialup, you have to pay, etc etc etc
    --
  • 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 [alternic.net] 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...
  • Well, the first mud I played on, Nemesis, it was much shorter to type the IP address than the machine name, and easier to remember too. Ok, it might have been easy to remember if you knew German... Lessee... 131.159.8.67 I think it was... It's only been gone what... 4 years now?

    Now maybe it won't take a WEEK to get a nameserver IP address change done...
  • When are they going to start doing stuff like .BIZ? and .arts and so on?

  • AlterNIC wanted the domain hierarchy expanded. They didn't really care if registration itself was opened, which was the issue as soon as NSI started charging for domain names.

    As I recall they had some odd ideas involving expansion of the TLDs. The bottom line was, they never took it through a standards process of any kind, they just put up a site and started running DNS. It's as if somebody started offering a new mail transport protocol; how long would it take to get adopted?

  • A co-worker just went to register.com and tried to register register.com and it came back saying that the domain might be available.

    heh heh.

    Their database is already hosing up.

  • I don't know what the CPU+bandwidth costs them to serve a domain name, but I'm sure it's less than $1-2/year. They've been ripping us off in a big way ever since they started charging. And they'll continue ripping us off now, for $9/year.

    If we (the Internet community) had been allowed to start our own non-profit DNS registry, we'd have done it a lot cheaper and Network Solutions would have gone away a long time ago.

    James

  • There is a somewhat similar situation here in the US that arised out of the devestiture of AT&T into the "Baby Bells". The central database of available phone numbers and infrastructure was given to a newly formed company called BellCore which still exists today. Each of the Baby Bells pays a processing fee again any transaction done against this central database. At the time of the divestiture, this was seen as a necessary evil since it was thought that for each new phone company to have to begin their central infrastructure from the ground up to be too difficult and time consuming. As far as I know, only Bell Atlantic has been developing their own internal version of BellCore. This is fortuitious in that it helps them open up their business to other local carriers in the hopes that the FCC will allow them into the long distance market. I guess the point of this long winded example is to show that as soon as the new registrars see the business need for their own databases, they will create them....just like Bell Atlantic.

    (correct me if I am wrong on any of these facts)
  • like .foo or something.

    A friend of mine would also like a new top-level domain: .wombat

    Frankly, I wouldn't mind having a .wombat vanity domain...

    Schwab

  • The five registrars are... (Score:5)

    by wenzi ( 6465 ) on Wednesday April 21, 1999 @09:27AM (#1922996) Homepage
    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
  • Creating new TLDs is not difficult (it's exactly what the AlterNIC has been doing for the last few years). It's getting people to change their DNS configurations to use servers which serve the new TLDs that's difficult.

    As it is now, every DNS looks to a pre-defined set of servers - the root servers - to find out where to look for information about a particular domain name. Those root servers are currently set up to handle information about only the .com, .net, etc TLDs. That's why creating new TLDs is such a big deal - you have to either change the root servers, or everybody has to change their DNSs to look at new/different root servers.

    Again, not a matter of difficulty, but a matter of an old, entrenched mechanism that's not so easy to replace.
  • What is wrong with that?

    If you use those IP ranges, just set up a custom zone file for those ranges on the nameserver in your intranet.
    --

  • Anyone have any idea what the beeping is over the RealAudio version of the press conference?

    It's damn annoying...
  • I just noticed that the private IP address ranges have showed up in DNS with the name "read-rfc1918-for-details.iana.net". (RFC1918 is the one that specifies the ranges of class A, B, and C private IP numbers.)

    I assume this is a mistake? It seems to have happened within the last day or two, I think. I only noticed because my IP-masq box stopped letting me telnet/ftp in! (I have pretty strict hosts.deny & hosts.allow... when I was trying to log in, rpc looked up the IP address of the machine I was logging in from, 192.168.1.10, and got a DNS reply for a subnet that wasn't allowed, which prevented me from telnet'ing in.)


  • what does it matter? when a company sucks up a .com domain, they almost always grab the corresponding .org, and .net (and now .biz, .art, .porn, .scriptkiddie, .wombat, .foo, .txt, and .tar.gz too) New TLDs will do very little if there isn't some prohibition on companies owning multiple domain names. (check out mac OS rumors' list of domains that apple grabbed up recently to see what I mean.)
  • Ha. I had hoped so too, but checking their info out (http://www.ina.com.au/register/registerfr.html) gives:

    .com, .org, .net Domain Name Registration Prices (renewable every two years): RRP $180 AU, 7 days turnaround.

    It's cheaper (and quicker) to pay NSI's $70 US with a Visa card, working out at around $110 to $120 AU...

  • You too can have your own domain name!!!!*

    * Sorry, metoo.metoo.metoo.scriptkiddie.com is already taken.

  • 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.
  • Agreed. However, these sort of things are easier said than done. The fact is that the whole issue of domain names has been managed really badly and it really ought to be taken out of the private sector altogether.

    Dodger
  • ..coz you obviously don't understand.

    The Grid isn't going to be a private data network that companies subscribe to. It'll be a public data network that anyone can join by becoming a shareholder in. In other words, it'll be owned by the companies who use it.

    Now I know that this whole idea of co-operatively owned, non-profit companies is probably quite foreign to you Yanks, but just think of it as being a bit like Socialism.

    At the moment, the Internet is merely a bunch of private data networks which are hooked together at peering points. Administratively, it's a fucking disaster, as this whole domains issue amply illustrates. The lack of a centralised controlling authority for the Internet is a major problem. The Grid solves this problem by having the main backbone network owned and operated by a single company (let's call it "GridCorp"). Therefore, there'll be no need for peering. Except for peering with the Internet, which will be handled by the GridCorp.

    Now, in terms of the Grid, GridCorp will have a monopoly. But, because it's a co-operatively-owned company, noone will give a shit, and because it owns the network, over which it has the monopoly, there's no legal issues involved. If people don't like it, they can fuck off and set up their own hugely expensive private network.

    If they do like it, they can join the network, become a shareholder in GridCorp and have a say in how the network is run.

    Gee, you know, I think this could almost be described as "democracy"!!!!

    Dodge

  • ...except for the power we allow them to have. The whole domain name service is a de facto standard, not a de jure one. The main reason it's still in place is because it's big, it's established and people don't really know how to go about overthrowing it. But that _will_ change, sooner or later.

    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 [www.nic.uk]), 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...!
    --
  • I've posted this before, but I'll do it again...

    A good compromise would be simply make it illegal/impossible to actually sell a domain until it has been paid for in the first place.

    Incidentally, I'm somewhat certain there's a URL or some other resource that you can check to see if a domain is registered already, but I dunno it offhand.
  • It would be far too easy to register names for your wife, kids, parents, friends, pets, etc.
  • 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.

    I see no justification for this. Why should we restrict private transactions simply because some people are making a profit off of them. Although this might deter some speculators, it would also make it impossible for companies who logically out to have a given domain name from getting it. If I own an Apple orchard, and I register apple.com, it is perfectly reasonable that Apple computer should pay me a premium for the domain. To ban that would mean that anyone who wants Apple's home page gets my apple orchard instead.

    Private property is needed on the 'net every bit as much as in real life. Whether domain names are sold or liscenced, the people who obtain them should be free to use them however they please, including selling them.
  • I agree. What's the difference between some guy going to a concert and buying up all of the tickets only to sell them at ten times the price at the door and these domain gimps going up and buying all of the domains they think are interesting and re-selling them?

    Nothing. Both should be legal. When you choose to buy a domain name or a ticket, you are making a gamble that it will be valuable. At this point, all the really valuable domain names are already taken, so banning their resale is not gonna stop many squatters.

    If this practice is ignored or even legitimized, what's to stop our friendly new registrars from doing the same thing?

    Well in this case they have been granted a government-imposed monopoly, and so if they misbehave, the government certainly should bring them into line. But *anyone* has the opportunity to buy domain names, and so there is no reason for the government to restict their use once they are sold to private individuals.

  • Heh.

    A student group at the University of Trondheim, Norway did just that: Added "langnese" (trans: "long nose") as name for 127.0.0.1 to the database for the "nvg.unit.no" domain. After publicising the name, they even got angry mails from someone accusing them of ripping their FTP site... :-)
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Alternic still exists. My home LAN's DNS server points off to it. Seems to work fine.
  • How is this going to be any different than AT+T or other private data networks (other than IPv6)?

    It seems the discussion is going like this:

    1) Private networks offer security and QOS - let's use them.
    2) No, the Internet is cool and cheap - let's use it.
    3) Hey - the Internet has low security and QOS - let's use a private network! Aren't we smart!
    --

  • You've never heard about the worldwide WINS server?

    --
  • "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."

    A ban on private resale won't do any good. You could still tie up a domain name and then charge $10,000 to drop the registration.

    A better system would be to make the charges incremental. So, you'd pay $20 for one domain name, $30 for the second, $40 for the third, etc. Somebody who's just registering a few names can soak the extra cost but speculators would go broke registering even dozens.
  • Sanford Wallace could be the only other registrar and I'd still run from NSI. I cant even put into words how hideous their service is.

    Hell, I'll even use Verio if I have to and dont get me started on what's wrong with that company (I worked there for 6 months while they destroyed the ISP I worked for).

    -Rich
  • Requiring a domain to be paid for before it's sold won't deter the squatters. If they have a domain 'locked-up' with their re-registration scripts, and someone comes along and wants to buy it from them, all they have to do is PAY for the thing ($70), and then turn around and sell it to the client ($xxx). What's the delay, a few days? Unless of course the time it takes for NS (or whoever the squatter is using to register the said domain) to process a payment is horribly long...

    This is akin to a video store perpetually keeping the new "Matrix" (hypothetical situation, of course) videotapes for their town on perpetual order, but not being delivered or paid for, to keep all the OTHER video stores from getting it... then when someone comes into their store (which they inevitably have to), they pay their distributor however much, have a kid run over and get the tape, and charge the customer oodles more.
  • Perhaps, if they don't require somthing like AOL's special DNS client software to set up your system. They do have a bad tendency to require their own proprietary software.

    Well, that's just for the actual AOL client. The did, for instance, release the specs to the AIM protocol (of course, that's after someone had almost completely reverse-engineered it)
  • A better system would be to make the charges incremental. So, you'd pay $20 for one domain name, $30 for the second, $40 for the third, etc. Somebody who's just registering a few names can soak the extra cost but speculators would go broke registering even dozens.

    What type of braindead idea is that? Just because you own more than one domain doesn't mean you're a sepculator. I suggest you do a whois and see just how many domains someone like say Microsoft owns. You'll note that Internic returns the first 50 and gives up. Second, this will make a mess of the database. Nobody will use consistent NIC handles because they won't want to be owning more than one domain. And the organization fields will have the same sort of thing happen.

  • That's exactly right. It's been done already, though not with ".fsf". The problem is getting people to point to your DNS servers.
  • A judge (I think it was in Georgia) ruled that the domain names registered to a man were his property and could be taken by his creditors. The story was on /. within the last few weeks.

    Sprint, AT&T, MCI, the baby bells, and many others ould be fascinated to hear your theory that you are a part-owner of all their routers and cable.
  • I'll second that! (And not just because I'm sitting 10 feet from Rich, and he's a good shot. :-)

    It took me since last August to get two domains and one handle set with the correct addresses since I moved.

    Pay less? Hell, I'd pay more to get better service. Get the messages registrars: IT'S NOT THE MONEY. It's how you treat us.
  • 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:

    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 .02 anyway
  • It's not a function of "breaking" DNS. It's a function of making an "Open Source" DNS service. Anyone with a few root servers can start a whole hierarchy like AlterNIC did. I think with this zoo of people taking over .com, .org, and .net, it's time to support groups like AlterNIC.

    I went to make modifications on the "new" NSI page the other day, and it took me longer to find the form than it used to take me to just fill the thing out and send it in. I don't care who does the main TLDs anymore, and I don't care paying. I don't care if they have a monopoly. I want ONE company with a CONSISTENT interface and CONSISTENT rules to do it so that when I want a domain, I don't have to shop around and compare. This isn't like buying hardware or software, it's registering for an entry in a database that was a hack in the first place.

    Screw DNS. Lets start a new naming system to coincide with the rolling out of IPv6.

    -Chris
  • . . .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

  • So let me get this straight...if someone at, say, the FSF raised their hand and said, "I have the time and energy to regulate names in what is now the top level .fsf domain," and a very large number of people altered their DNS configs to support this, would someone get sued and/or arrested? If not, what is to prevent a large motivated community from establishing its own top level name space?
  • the internet is a public network built with public funds.

    Bzzzz... thanks for playing. Hasn't been that way for quite a while.
  • so does anyone know when we can _actually_ purchase domains at these new prices ? or is that still gonna be some time off when they get stuff organised ?

  • Actually, it'll be AOL's subsidiary PrimeHost that will handle the domain registration as part of its Web hosting service

  • Hmmm... Postel hasn't been dead for a year yet and already everything is changing at IANA... Sounds suspicious...

    Could somebody clarify how exactly IANA, ICANN, the NICs, the NSI and ISOC are supposed to interact? (And you might as well add the IETF, IAB, IRTF and IESG to the list to make sure things are confusing enough.)

  • Those 5 registrars edit Internic's databse, they don't have their own because Internic has one messed up database.
  • The DNS database is owned by NSI/InterNIC. The 5 additional companies have a connection to that database and can put in a domain name. AOL cannot screw this up. The entire process is eaxctly the same except 5 addtional companies have the registration software.
  • 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
  • The problem comes from Internic (Network Solutions). When Internic servers are too busy to reply to "whois" queries, register.com receives a "Too Busy" response. In this case, register.com displays "might be available" to the user since we cannot make that distinction yet.
  • ...Soon they will start selling air...
    It's so disgusting to see someone selling domains like theforcewillbewithu2.com for $100,000. I'm not kidding. Look at ebay.com. WWW became too lose. It would be a good idea to stop Network Solutions monopolizing the domain registration but... I think the registration should be very strict. The registered domains should not be sitting without content. And private domain trade SHOULD BE STOPPED.

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