gTLD DNS RFP

Thu Dec 2 17:31:16 UTC 1999

Sean,

The NSI Registry is responsible for the DNS service at 
the top of the COM/ORG/NET zones and thus the
motivation for the RFP. Diversity will be sought 
through diverse transit, geographical and topological
dispersion, etc.  If you are implying diversity of 
organization responsible for serving the zone, the NSI 
Registry is 100% responsible for serving the zones and 
is working through this process to put that in a formal 
framework, a necessary business condition given our 
contractual obligations.  We are trying to do that openly 
and with the involvement of this community.  In terms of 
the extent of the service performed by the hosting 
organization, that depends upon the nature of the proposals 
we receive - we are open-minded.

The roots are still roots but that is an RSSAC/ICANN issue.

--Tom

-----Original Message-----
From: Sean Donelan [mailto:sean at donelan.com]
Sent: Tuesday, November 30, 1999 10:36 PM
To: tomn at netsol.com
Cc: nanog at merit.edu
Subject: Re: gTLD DNS RFP

On Tue, 30 November 1999, "Newell, Tom" wrote:
> NSI recently released an RFP seeking hosts for gTLD DNS 
> servers for COM/NET/ORG. As it likely reached the "sales" 
> people at the organizations many of you represent, I 
> thought it appropriate to send a "heads-up" to this list. 

Is NSI replacing the current root-servers being used with
its own gTLD servers, or is this for the gTLD servers already
installed by NSI?  Since NSI already controls over 40% of the
servers used for COM/NET/ORG, and 40% seems to be the magic
number for continued reliable operation of the zones, I would
be interested in how diversity will be maintained.