NAVYJOBS.COM

Wed Apr 24 09:04:17 UTC 1996

Jon Zeef wrote:

>> Flattening domain name tree by adding more TLDs is the Wrong Thing.
>> It is totally bogus.
>> 
>> How about ceasing .COM allocations altogether?  There's .US and .INT.

>Which have policies that make them not very usefull for offloading some
>of .com.  

Heh.  Are the policies written in stone?  Is it gospel or
something?  Are we supposed to snap to attention as somebody says
the magic word "policy"?  I'd rather smack those who invent
stupid policies on the head so they won't do that again.

Can anybody please answer how did it happen that IANA allowed
people who cannot come up with sane policies to hijack the
country's domain?  How did it happen that .US is close to useless?

>First you say it's the wrong approach, then you suggest using that
>basic approach.

Wrong.  Did i propose to create new TLDs?  Switching from .COM
to .US is good because it breaks the dot-envy feeding frenzy.
And .US already has a mandatory tree structure in it.

>More TLDs is the Right Thing for business reasons and to a small extent,
>technically.

To a *very* small extent.  They're ultimately destructive from
the social point of view.  How do you propose to prevent the
problem which happens in .COM now from repeating at top level?
The only thing which kept top level domain from bloating is
the strict policy of ISO coutry-codes only.  I know several
service providers which will start lobbying IANA for new TLDs
the very next day it is allowed -- just because they percieve
that registries run by competitiors have the ability to harm
their business.  And you have no way to find out if their claims
have any merit.

US is lucky to have InterNIC which is *not* in bit transport
business.  It is not like that in other places.

Sorry, new TLDs is worse than non-solution.

I've been there with .SU name allocation policies.  As long
as some guidelines (i.e. only geographical/major metropolitan
first-level domains) were maintained everything was fine.  They
were abandoned for .RU -- and look what a mess it is now.
Exactly like .COM.

Why the alternative registries won't take subdomains of .US
which are not used for states?  (Or why not allocate names
like <org>.<state><registry#>.US)?  *Any* scheme limiting
branching of a tree to some reasonable level is better than
"new TLD" proposal which does not include any guidelines
to that effect.

Please do not dump US problems onto outside world.

--vadim