Re: Verisign insanity - Distributed non-attack

["Stephen J. Wilcox" <steve () telecomplete co uk>]

On Tue, 16 Sep 2003, John Palmer wrote:

> Sorry to sound like a broken record, but we in the Inclusive Namespace
> have been saying this all along.

Yeah, cmon step down from your soapbox.. 

> How about a world with 1000's of TLDs all operated by different people
> with NO restrictions imposed by a monopoly-supporting politburo (ICANN).

No, you miss the point. There are 100s of TLDs already, the point here is 
that this is .com and .net, I dont care about .blah!

Steve

> How about a root network operated under rules designed ONLY to
> support the technical stability of the network and not under rules that
> masquerade as such but are really designed to prop up a monopoly of
> four organizations so that they can corner the market and shut out
> all others.
>
> Imagine such a world. Some people are doing just that. Some people 
> with a LOT of money to spend on such a project. Stay tuned.
>
> In a free market namespace (which the ICANN/USG IS *NOT*), 
> with no un-neccessary barriers to entry, competition would weed
> out the players that did anti-social, predatory things like VRSGN
> is doing.
>
> Either a business changes its practices to be in tune with its customer
> base or it vanishes. 
>
> FYI: ADNS had wildcard records in the DNS for the .USA, .EARTH, .Z, 
> .LION and .AMERICA TLDs. They simply pointed to a page that said "This
> domain has not been registered yet". Those records were removed 
> today because of the controversy surrounding wildcard records at the
> TLD level.  I see a valid use for such records but there is also potential
> for abuse and perception is sometimes as important as reality. In the 
> Inclusive Namespace, competition is a reality because there are no 
> artificial barriers to entry in the marketplace and players had better listen
> to the consumer's opinions or else they will not survive. Thats as it should
> be. So, why isn't the #1 (in terms of traffic) root server network operated
> that way?
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Richard Cox" <Richard () mandarin com>
> To: <nanog () merit edu>
> Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2003 10:18
> Subject: Re: Verisign insanity - Distributed non-attack
>
>
> > On Tue, 16 Sep 2003 17:02:59 +0200 "RoDent" <rodent () mighty co za> wrote:
> >
> > | Effectively this would amount to  "denial of service" attack, but since
> > | there is nothing illegal about making an http request to an invalid
> > | hostname, Verisign will be bringing the denial of service attack upon
> > | themselves, and unfortunately dragging ISP's with them.  Why ISP's
> > | haven't publically taken a stance against this yet is fascinating.
> >
> > While I completely share your concern about Verisign's behaviour, I have
> > a higher level concern about anything seeking to disrupt services on the
> > 'net.  For some weeks now, several of the abuse-prevention organisations
> > have been subjected to Distributed Denial-of-Service attacks; the attack
> > on SORBS is still continuing, and very few of the networks carrying this
> > DDoS traffic have lifted a finger to either limit or trace the attacking
> > traffic.  Which, I have to say, is *most* disappointing.
> >
> > -- 
> > Richard Cox