MEDIA: ICANN rejects .xxx domain

Fri May 12 07:09:15 UTC 2006

On May 11, 2006, at 11:28 PM, Martin Hannigan wrote:
> Im having an offline discussion with a list member and I'll ask,  
> why does it matter if you have a domain name if a directory can  
> hold everything you need to know about them via key words and ip- 
> addrs, NAT's and all?

I think there is a place for that discussion; a directory would allow  
for containment, which might allow the same character string to be  
used as a name by different groups if they have sufficiently low  
probability of needing to communicate. There are other ways to handle  
this as well. You might google some out-dated drafts by John Klensin  
that mention such a concept.

As someone else mentioned, there is this authority thing, though. So  
who manages this name directory? If there is a directory managed by a  
central agency of some sort that in turn hands LDAP queries (or  
whatever) off to local instances of directories managed by companies,  
how does that differ (apart from the use of a different transport)  
from what DNS does today? Is that central directory-managing  
authority someone we have to collectively agree to, and how do we do  
that? How do changes in that directory get made? And if there is no  
central directory, then basically we have the size and complexity of  
the .com, .net, .org, and other large namespaces to contend with -  
just how do we determine that www.renesys translates to 69.84.130.137  
and not to 198.133.219.25? How do we distribute that information, and  
assure ourselves that it got distributed correctly?

I'm not saying it is impossible, or even difficult. I am, however,  
pointing out that the job DNS does today would have to be done in the  
new regime, and would have to be done at least as well, and would be  
fairly likely to have many of the same characteristics, at least when  
taken in the large.

Now, as to ccTLDs vs gTLDs, if anyone wants to eliminate one or the  
other they get my vote. I think that gTLDs mostly create a mess, and  
if I were King they would have been eliminated a long time ago. But  
that is the opinion of one person, and is probably worth what you  
paid to receive it.