[142075] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: ICANN to allow commercial gTLDs
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Fred Baker)
Fri Jun 17 18:29:52 2011
From: Fred Baker <fred@cisco.com>
In-Reply-To: <FC582C1D-F044-4BA3-B636-54568D4C765B@virtualized.org>
Date: Fri, 17 Jun 2011 15:29:08 -0700
To: David Conrad <drc@virtualized.org>
Cc: NANOG <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
On Jun 17, 2011, at 2:33 PM, David Conrad wrote:
> On Jun 17, 2011, at 11:23 AM, Jay Ashworth wrote:
>>>> http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/06/17/202245/
>>> You just learned about this now?
>> In fact I did. I certainly haven't seen it mentioned on NANOG in the =
last 6=20
>> months or so; where should I have seen it?
>=20
> New TLDs have been discussed now for over a decade. Press (both =
technical and popular) on ICANN activities have ratcheted up =
significantly recently, particularly with the approval of .XXX (which =
was recently discussed here on NANOG: =
http://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/2011-March/034488.html). Not =
blaming/accusing, just surprised this would be a surprise. I guess I've =
been living in the layer9 cloud too long....
Yes. Since ICANN was formed, they have periodically come to the IETF to =
ask how many TLDs we thought the system could support. On the basis of =
the SLD count (if example.com is a domain name and ".com" is a TLD, =
"example" is an SLD) within recognized gTLDs like .com, I would have to =
say that a properly maintained database can handle a very large number =
of names in a flat name space. That said, that does not imply that the =
DNS should be replaced with a flat namespace; there's this "scaling" =
thing that competent people think about.
What I told them, periodically, as IETF Chair, was that the number of =
TLDs in the network was largely a business discussion. If a potential =
TLD came forth with a business plan that made sense, fine, and if the =
business plan didn't pencil out, there was no sense in adding the TLD. =
Given the number of times they asked, that wasn't a satisfactory =
response; they wanted a number.
In this case, I would look at it this way. Imagine that ICANN wanted to =
go into the business of selling SLDs in competition with .com etc. How =
would they go about it? There are two obvious ways: they could create a =
new TLD such as ".icann" and sell names like "example.icann". Or, the =
could start selling TLDs on the open market. The really nice thing from =
their perspective would be that they don't need to maintain the =
database, bandwidth, or putzpower needed to supply the service - they =
already have a set of root zone operators that have volunteered to do =
so. So, they make money on the names and deliver the service for free.
Pencils out for them, I suppose.
> Regards,
> -drc
>=20
>=20
