----- Original Message ----- > From: "Fred Baker" <[email protected]>
> Yes. Since ICANN was formed, they have periodically come to the IETF > to ask how many TLDs we thought the system could support. On the basis > of the SLD count (if example.com is a domain name and ".com" is a TLD, > "example" is an SLD) within recognized gTLDs like .com, I would have > to say that a properly maintained database can handle a very large > number of names in a flat name space. That said, that does not imply > that the DNS should be replaced with a flat namespace; there's this > "scaling" thing that competent people think about. > > What I told them, periodically, as IETF Chair, was that the number of > TLDs in the network was largely a business discussion. If a potential > TLD came forth with a business plan that made sense, fine, and if the > business plan didn't pencil out, there was no sense in adding the TLD. > Given the number of times they asked, that wasn't a satisfactory > response; they wanted a number. > > In this case, I would look at it this way. Imagine that ICANN wanted > to go into the business of selling SLDs in competition with .com etc. > How would they go about it? There are two obvious ways: they could > create a new TLD such as ".icann" and sell names like "example.icann". > Or, the could start selling TLDs on the open market. The really nice > thing from their perspective would be that they don't need to maintain > the database, bandwidth, or putzpower needed to supply the service - > they already have a set of root zone operators that have volunteered > to do so. So, they make money on the names and deliver the service for > free. And that's fine... but it still doesn't forsee the idea that a registry *could be it's own -- and only -- client*. For me, the engineering problem remains *single-component FQDNs*. I can't itemize the code they'll break, but I'm quite certain there's a lot. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink [email protected] Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274
