DNS Subdomains

Thu Nov 14 22:12:04 UTC 2002

Gawie Marais (Home) wrote:
> 
> Might be a simple question.... But... I've got no idea what the answer
> could be...
> 
> In the early days, one only had a .com address space (amongst the most
> popular ones). These days, there is .com(this) and .com(that) and any
> kind of .(whatever) you can think of.
> 
> My question...
> 
> How does one start a .(whatever) ?? Who is actually controlling these
> .(whatever) domains ?

Anybody can put a DNS server on the internet that serves a top-level domain.

The hard part is getting the rest of the world to recognize the 
existance of your new TLD, and getting them to recognize your server (or 
pool of servers) as the official server for that TLD.

The official way to get this recognition is to get ICANN 
(http://www.icann.org/) to recognize you.  If you are a government, and 
you want ICANN to recognize your server as serving the TLD corresponding 
to your ISO country code, I don't think it's too big a deal, although 
there may be a lot of red tape to cut through.

If you want to register some other TLD, however, it's almost impossible. 
  Note how long and drawn out (and politically charged) the process was 
in getting the most recent top-level domains (.aero, .biz, .coop, .info, 
.museum, .name and .pro) created.  There are many more proposed TLDs 
that have either been rejected or have been tied up in committees.

It is possible to bypass ICANN, but that approach isn't any better.

One way is to get listed with an alternate root server, but you will 
only be recognized by those service providers that choose to use that 
alternate root.  This is not the entire internet.  I don't even think 
it's a significant portion of it (although I might be wrong here.)

If you don't get listed with an alternate root, then your only choice is 
to get service providers to manually configure their DNS servers to 
point to you for resolving your TLD.  IMO, you've got no chance of 
getting even one major service provider to do this for you.

In short, if you want to create a new top-level domain, don't bother. 
Even if it's possible, I don't think it's worth the effort.

-- David