North American Network Operators Group
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Re: new.net: yet another dns namespace overlay play

  • From: Adam Rothschild
  • Date: Wed Mar 07 13:09:21 2001 
On Wed, Mar 07, 2001 at 12:20:09AM -0800, Aaron Hopkins wrote:
> So the short answer minus the marketing-speak is that new.net is
> offering domains in new TLDs without having them in
> *.root-servers.net.  The idea isn't new; people have been doing this
> for years with limited success.
> [...]
> The "launch partners" are listed as Earthlink, [email protected], NetZero.

NetZero is an idealab! Capital Partner, so I'm not terribly surprised
there.  EarthLink and [email protected] are big and well-respected names,
and surely do carry _some_ weight as to setting precedents.  But these
organizations do not the internet make, and the success of new.net's
new TLD's is dependent upon widespread adaptation.  What incentive --
operational, financial, and otherwise -- is there for other providers
to follow suit?

What differentiates new.net from other people who might want to
utilize similar tactics for TLD's of their own?  And what happens when
there's TLD overlap between you and other alternate registrars?
Clearly some sort of authority structure, be it ICANN or something
idealab!-created to "compete" with ICANN, is needed.

I'm sure Dr. Joe Baptista and Roeland Meyer would like it if the
global Internet could resolve .god domains, and certainly Jim
Phlemming has a TLD up his sleeves to be used in conjunction with IPv8
rollout... ;)

> This is obviously less clean than just having ICANN list new TLDs.
> But given the ongoing frustration with ICANN, there is significant
> interest in a different approach, and new.net is taking one.

I agree, ICANN (or is ICan't more appropriate?) is a very broken
organization, and I wholeheartedly appreciate the efforts made by you
and others to circumvent them through innovation such as this.

Still, they're the folks most(?) Internet operators recognize as being
in charge, and until that changes, I question the usefulness of
alternate root servers.

-adam