Re: ICANN to allow commercial gTLDs

[Jay Ashworth <jra () baylink com>]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Fred Baker" <fred () cisco com>

> 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.

And that's fine... but it still doesn't forsee the idea that a registry
*could be it's own -- and only -- client*.

For me, the engineering problem remains *single-component FQDNs*.  I
can't itemize the code they'll break, but I'm quite certain there's a lot.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                  Baylink                       jra () baylink com
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