Registrar and registry backend processes.
davidb at panix.com
davidb at panix.com
Tue Jan 18 02:16:25 UTC 2005
[second posting attempt, apologies if the first
identical post ever arrives]
On Mon, 17 Jan 2005 15:47:50 -0700, Michael Loftis
<mloftis at wgops.com> wrote:
>It's clearly broken, and needs to be put up for
>public review by 'the powers that be' so that it can
>be fixed. What's happening now feels close to a
>boiler room poker game, noone seems to know all the
>players, and even fewer know all the rules, so in the
>end everyone is a loser.
i suspect part of the reason for it feeling this way
is because of the large amounts of money that are made
specifically off of the .com and the .net registries.
~$1.2 _billion_ for .com and ~$30 million for .net
annually (numbers from the following article). for
what? the actual costs involved in administering
these databases can't be anywhere near the revenue
generated. the public is being bled for the greed of
a few (as usual), imho.
anyhow, it also makes me wonder about the motivations
behind this incident coming so close to the
application deadline for administration of the .net
registry ($30 million/year x 6 years minimum =
$180,000,000). i dislike conspiracy theories but i'm
also a realpolitiker.
david
--
P.S.
can anyone comment on the reputations of the .net
registry administration contenders (no need to comment
on verisign)?
VeriSign Has Challengers to Run .Net, the Domain
By ELIZABETH OLSON
The New York Times
Published: January 17, 2005
WASHINGTON, Jan. 16 - As long as the Internet runs
smoothly, few people think too much about its
workings. But later this month, the system's
underpinnings will become a topic of debate when rival
companies publicly bid to run .net, one of the
Internet's most popular domains.
This will be the first time that VeriSign's .net
franchise will be challenged. While .net is not as
ubiquitous as .com, it has more than five million
registered domain names, which translates daily into
millions of page views, 155 billion e-mail messages
and some $1.4 million in commercial transactions,
according to VeriSign, the company in Mountain View,
Calif., that manages .com, as well as .net.
About 40 percent of government domains allow access
through .net, including the White House, the United
States Senate, Homeland Security agencies and the
Social Security Administration, making it a vital
Internet transportation layer, said Tom Galvin, a
spokesman for VeriSign.
So far, at least three companies in addition to
VeriSign have indicated that they plan to vie for the
franchise, which expires June 30. They are NeuStar, a
Sterling, Va., company that runs .biz, and Afilias,
which manages .info. A nonprofit firm in Frankfurt,
Denic eG, which manages Germany's eight million
registered .de domain names, has also indicated that
it is planning to bid.
Selecting the domain manager is the job of the
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.
But Icann finds itself in a ticklish position because
it has publicly clashed with VeriSign over the
company's proposed Site Finder service, which would
redirect queries from inactive or defunct Web
addresses to a search engine supported by advertisers
signed up by VeriSign.
When Icann concluded that was an unacceptable
diversion and refused to allow the service, VeriSign
accused the group of overstepping its role and filed a
lawsuit. The initial case was filed in federal court
but set aside, and VeriSign refiled it in California
state court, where it is pending.
To avoid "any perception of bias because of the
litigation," Icann has decided to appoint an
independent body to evaluate the applications, which
are due Tuesday, said Icann's chief operating officer,
Paul D. Twomey. A .net administrator is to be selected
three months before VeriSign's contract expires.
"We are on record that the operator could be the
present one," said Mr. Twomey.
The important point, he emphasized, is that the .net
operator must have the technical capacity and the
security safeguards to keep the domain up and running
smoothly. The bidding process is also a sort of dress
rehearsal for about 10 new domain names that are to be
introduced and put up for bidding, he said. They
include .jobs, .travel, .post and .mobi (for mobile
phone content).
If VeriSign loses, it would not be the first Internet
registry switch. In early 2003, VeriSign, as part of
its deal to keep control of .com, agreed on
competitive bidding for the management of .org and
.net. The Public Interest Registry, a nonprofit group,
won the bidding for .org. VeriSign is lobbying
actively to hold onto its .net stewardship, however,
lining up written support from major players including
Microsoft and I.B.M.
At $5 a year for each domain name, VeriSign earns an
estimated $30 million annually from administering .net
- far less than its revenues for .com, which has 200
million names at $6 each.
Mr. Galvin said that because of its effect on the
United States economy, deciding on the .net manager
was "the biggest decision Icann has had to make so
far." More than a third of the top e-commerce sites -
including much-visited sites like walmart.com -
actually use a .net server, he said, making the domain
more important than the number of names would
indicate. In fact, the five million registered names
only amount to about 8 percent of all domain names.
VeriSign is campaigning on what it says is a stellar
track record of keeping .net running continuously,
though its rivals say that the California company has
lagged behind on technological innovations that would
make .net run more reliably. VeriSign has administered
.net since 2000, when it acquired Network Solutions,
which had operated the domain since 1992.
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