Re: United States Says No! Internet is Ours!

> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But although the 'real roots' work just
>> fine, as you note, someone starting their own competing root server >> could bypass all the silly requirements of things like ICANN couldn't >> he? In addition to copying all the data now in use, he could also start >> his own domains, could he not? He could start a domain for example >> called '.abracadabra' or whatever name and it would not be subject to >> any rules but his own. Or am I missing something here?

I don't have to pretend to be a root server to set up my own top-level domains. If I want ".abracadabra", I can set up my server to serve it, possibly delegating it to some other server (in BIND, this is a "forward zone") or slaving the .abracadabra zone from some other server. I can use the normal root servers for all the other stuff, except the OFFICIAL .abracadabra should it ever exist. Of course, the only machines that will see this are ones using servers (directly or indirectly) that know about this zone. If I can convince enough people to use my servers or (e.g. use "forwarders" in a BIND config file) point a reference to .abracadabra to my servers (the BIND "forward zone"), I might actually be able to sell domain names in that zone profitably (dream on!).

Only that his root domains would only be recognized by users of his > root servers. There might be some use for this in setting up shorthand > domain names, but it wouldn't make the actual sites private, since they > would still have public underlying IP addresses.

To say nothing of the fact that DNS is usually public: if you have a zone on your server, I can normally query it directly if it has a public IP address and you didn't put in an access list to restrict who to answer queries from.

Gordon L. Burditt