- dns-wg - mailman.ripe.net

Re: Second level domains for individuals
by Francis Dupont 18 Nov '95

18 Nov '95

In your previous mail you wrote: There is a hot debate in Hungary. Some peoples want me to start registering second level domains for individuals. => This question was hot debates in DNS working group too. We have no (not yet ?) good solution but we understand well the issues. This applies to other problems with a lot of small domains, individuals (aka private persons) are only the worst case: - individuals can be put in a second/third level domain - this domain must be split (because an huge flat domain is bad for tech and admin reasons) and *more* the management of its sub-domains must be given to ad hoc organization (this *is* the real problem!). - one way is to use a geographical hierarchy (as US domain). It gives a nice split without problems but it is hard to involve local/regional authorities into DNS management (it is an half success but in fact you need only to give the first level, ie regional). The main drawback is the name (and E-mail address) changes when an individual moves. - the second way is to use an arbitrary split, for instance an hash on the name. It gives good and *stable* split but it can't solve the management delegation problem. - the last way is to put individuals into domains related and managed by ISP (Internet Service Providers). This has a *terrible* drawback: individuals will be *bound* to their service providers. Then I can't recommend this! There is no new idea ? Francis.Dupont(a)inria.fr PS: just for an example of the need of a solution of this problem: in France some CATV operators propose (experimental) access to the Internet to individuals using PCs and CATV modems (pre IEEE 802.14).

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Re: Second level domains for individuals
by Gabor Kiss 10 Nov '95

10 Nov '95

> First off, this is a hot debate in the RIPE DNS working group > (dns-rw(a)ripe.net), and I suggest followups to be sent there. This is a Hungarian language discussion. I'm afraid most of dns-rw subscribers doesn't speak Hungarian. However articles are archived here: URL: gopher://HUEARN.sztaki.hu:70/11/listak/lsvarch/HUDOM-L Regards Gabor

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Re: Second level domains for individuals
by aw＠eunet.ch 10 Nov '95

10 Nov '95

Can you give me one good reason why we SHOULD register private individuals? Just one good reason. Then we'll see.......... Aleks Null Illigitimi Caborundom

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Re: Second level domains for individuals
by e07＠nikhef.nl 10 Nov '95

10 Nov '95

> There is a hot debate in Hungary. Some peoples want me to > start registering second level domains for individuals. Arbitrary individuals ? The debate will become even hotter as soon as you start to implement such plan. Perhaps so hot as to cause a partial meltdown of the internet as we know it. Look at what happened to the *.com domain. Even most knowledgable and repectable people did not foresee that this would grow out-of-hand so soon as it does now. Registering individuals in one single domain constitutes essentially one enormous flat namespace. The DNS was designed to avoid just that, both for technical and administrative reasons. >From a technical view, I am not convinced that the DNS will be able to gracefully handle domains with, say, a million entries. Not an extraordinary number in the long run for a big country. But presumably the administrative burden will be overwhelming. Compare this with administration in real life, be it civil registration, telephone directories, you name it. All has been organized in a distributed matter of some sort, e.g. geographically. Apparently that's the way to survive. Think about arbitration of names. A first-come first-serve policy would be totally unrealistic. Strong naming conventions would have to be designed. This may be impossible to enforce. You really have to think beyond current experiments with a few hundred individuals, and anticipate what can happen when this becomes common practice. Having individuals registered in one single domain, *any* domain, does not look a good idea. In case that domain were a top-level domain, it looks like disaster. -- Eric Wassenaar

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Re: Second level domains for individuals
by Niall O'Reilly 10 Nov '95

10 Nov '95

> From @IRLEARN.UCD.IE:Piet.Beertema@CWI.NL Fri Nov 10 12:48:14 1995 > > 1) Do not register individuals. This is only temporary > relief but it may last a few years. > That doesn't work either, the individuals just pretend > to be businesses. > They can't, when [evidence of] Chamber of Commerce > registration is required, as is the case for .NL. > And since CoC registration costs money and has a > couple of legal and tax implications, it serves > as a good showstopper in many cases. Sometimes I miss the Dutch business virtues: they make life so simple! When the local legal system recognizes that a private individual without registration may be a business, or even a number of businesses, it's not so easy. I guess the Australian system shares a common origin withe the Irish one. Niall O'Reilly

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Re: Second level domains for individuals
by Geert Jan de Groot 10 Nov '95

10 Nov '95

Hi Gabor, First off, this is a hot debate in the RIPE DNS working group (dns-rw(a)ripe.net), and I suggest followups to be sent there. I know that at least for the NL TLD, it is required that one is registered in the Chambers of Commerce. (I hope piet^H^H^H^Hhostmaster does not mind this translation from the Dutch guidelines ;-) Geert Jan On Thu, 9 Nov 1995 17:45:21 +0100 Gabor Kiss wrote: > There is a hot debate in Hungary. Some peoples want me to > start registering second level domains for individuals. > > Personally I think this practice would have serious disadvantages: > - I would have to process incredible amount of registration requests. > - We would have to run the top level DNS on a really big machine. > - The RIPE-DB would contain 26000 domain objects instead of 16000. > > I wish to know how this problem is handled in different countries. > I guess there was several continent-wide discussion about this > question. Where can I find documents and archived matter?

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DNS Questionnaire
by Daniele Vannozzi 09 Nov '95

09 Nov '95

DNS Questionnaire ================= 1. Who defines your policies? They are defined by a open committee called ITA-PE which coordinates e-mail activities in Italy. The committee includes individuals from most of the italian Service Providers and Academic Institutions. 2. How do you establish your naming policies? The agreements are reached finding consensus (avoiding votes) after discussion either on a mailing list, ita-pe(a)nis.garr.it, or during quaterly meetings. 3. What legal status, if any, do your decisions/policies have? None for the time being, but we are expecting formal recognition from Italian PTT Ministry and UNINFO (ISO Italian branch). 4a. Would you register sub.tld (e.g. co.uk, ac.uk etc)? No. b. Do you have geographic subdomains in the tld (e.g. state.tld, county.tld)? Yes, hierarchical administrative geographycal domains c. Do you have different categories of 2nd level domains (e.g."public" ones like "co.at" and "private" ones like "alcatel.at") in parallel? Yes, administrative geographycal 2nd and 3rd level domains are public. d. If you have "public" 2nd level domains, what are the rules for running such a domain (e.g. everybody's registration has to be accepted for free if it fits into this category)? Public domains are delegated to an organization wishing to provide a free name service in its region. Delegation could be withdrawn if the delegated organization does not properly administer the geographical domain. e. If so, how do you split your tld? Hierarchical administrative geographical domains as follows: 2nd level - Regions registered with both full name and 3-letter shortname. (e.g. Lombardia and LOM, Toscana and TOS, etc) - Provincies with both fullname and 2-letter shortname. (e.g. Napoli and NA, Milano and MI, etc) 3rd level - Cities with fullname only, under their province. (e.g. Capri.NA.it, etc). Note that cities giving their name to the province do not register also as 3rd level. 5a. Would you register domain.tld (e.g. microsoft.uk)? Yes, if compliant with the registration rules. b. Would you register domain.sub.tld (e.g. microsoft.co.uk)? No. Only if sub.tld is already registered, then we accept to register (for information purposes only) its subdomains. 6a. Do you allow individuals to register names or just organisations? Just organizations. b. If you differentiate between individuals and organisations, what are your criteria? An organization should have legal status as such. 7a. Do you require proof of identity? Yes. b. If so, how do you prove the identity of a requestor? We ask the requestor to sign his acceptance of the rules on company head paper and we trust a number of known ISPs who actually submit the request on behalf of the requestor. 8. Do you register domains only for organisations/individuals located in your country or do you allow anyone to register in your tld? Only organizations with legal status in Italy. 9a. Do you allow a single organisation to register more than one domain? No, with some exceptions (e.g. legally registered newspapers and magazines belonging to the same publisher, some telematics services, etc) b. If so, do you limit the number of domains registered by a single organisation? n/a 10a.To whom would you allocate well known names like digital.tld/ digital.sub.tld? We ask, but without enforcement, that the domain name should be as much similar as possible to the legal name of the requesting organization. If not we first recall the rule "one name per organization" and briefly try to convince the requestor not to use a well known name to avoid conflicts in the future. b.What criteria do you use when deciding whether or not to allow a name? Names are allowed except when they are in the set of the reserved names or shorter then 3 characteres (at 2nd level) or of 2 characters (under any other "public" domain). 11a.How do you arbitrate between two or more claims to the same name? We inform both parties of the claim asking if one of them could renounce. If none renounces we give the name to the first requestor and mark it as challenged. We leave to them resolve their conflict as they wish. We query at regular intervals for both parties to resolve the challenge, in any form they wish, to solve the situation: bilateral agreement, arbitration commettee, civil law judgment, ... We also inform both parties when very similar names may cause ambiguity. b.Who is responsible for the arbitration? Any Italian legal entity. 12a.Do you allow the registration of geographical names (cities, countries, rivers, etc)? Yes but regions, provinces and cities are special cases (see 4.b,c,d,e). b.If so, would you register one for an individual organisation? Yes, but we briefly try to discourage the requestor. 13a.Do you have any names which may not be registered (e.g. names in bad taste, names of protocols, etc)? Names shorter than 3 characters (2nd level domains) or 2 characters (other levels). Names of protocols/services (tcp, finger, ftp, telnet, etc) and ambiguos names (email, www, ecc). 14a.Do you run secondary nameservice for subdomains of the tld? Yes, only for 2nd level subdomains (e.g. cnr.it, fiat.it, ecc) and 2nd and 3rd level administrative geographical domains. b.If so, is this optional/mandatory and do you charge for the service? Optional, no charge. Mandatory for public geographical domains. 15a.Do you check for a running nameserver at the time of request? Yes, for at least a couple of them b.Do you check for a running nameserver at regular intervals after the name has been delegated? Yes, because we check for the reachability of each postmaster@<domain>.it. 16. Do you allow the reservation of names (i.e. no running service)? No 17a.Do you charge for reservation/registration of names? No, at the moment. Policy to be modified b.If so, is it a one off fee, an annual subscription or both? n/a c.How much is the fee? n/a 18a.Do you remove unused domain names? Yes. b.If so, how do you define an unused domain? A domain that is cancelled by the admin-c or that is no longer serviced by any Service Provider. A domain which results inactive for more than 6 consecutive months. 19. Do you think that the current system you operate will be changed over the next 12 months? Yes, completion and update of existing rules and policies are expected soon. 20. Do you accept requests for domains from providers only, from anyone or from a different group only? >From Providers only. 21. What resources are allocated to the administration of the domain? 3 FTE, 2 servers, 3 workstations. 22. Do you have any automation of the registration/delegation process? Yes, partial (e-mail robot). Daniele Vannozzi Phone: +39 50 593280 GARR-NIS Phone NIS: +39 50 593360 c/o CNUCE - Istituto del CNR Fax: +39 50 904052 Via Santa Maria 36 Telex: 500371 - CNUCE 56100 Pisa - Italy E-mail: vannozzi(a)nis.garr.it

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DNS Questionnaire
by Guy Davies 08 Nov '95

08 Nov '95

Dear Colleague, As part of the efforts of the DNS working group at RIPE to have a better understanding of the usage of the domain name service in Europe and the South and Eastern Mediterranean, I have been asked to prepare and distribute this questionnaire. Please take a few minutes of your time to complete the questionnaire. The responses will be collated and the results will be made public on the WWW. Initially, this is likely to be on my personal web pages (http://www.pipex.net/people/guyd) but I hope to find space on the RIPE web server for this important information. I would be grateful if the SOA for any top level domains with neutral subdomains (e.g. co.at) would either answer for all the neutral subdomains or distribute the questionnaire to the SOA for each of the neutral subdomains. The more accurate and complete the information, the better. Thankyou very much for your time. Regards, Guy Davies tel: 01223 250122 ---------- fax: 01223 250121 Network Support Engineer email: guyd(a)pipex.net Unipalm PIPEX url: http://www.pipex.net 216 Cambridge Science Park, Milton Road, Cambridge, CB4 4WA DNS Questionnaire ================= 1. Who defines your policies? 2. How do you establish your naming policies? 3. What legal status, if any, do your decisions/policies have? 4a. Would you register sub.tld (e.g. co.uk, ac.uk etc)? b. Do you have geographic subdomains in the tld (e.g. state.tld, county.tld)? c. Do you have different categories of 2nd level domains (e.g. "public" ones like "co.at" and "private" ones like alcatel.at) in parallel? d. If you have "public" 2nd level domains, what are the rules for running such a domain (e.g. everybody's registration has to be accepted for free if it fits into this category)? e. If so, how do you split your tld? 5a. Would you register domain.tld (e.g. microsoft.uk)? b. Would you register domain.sub.tld (e.g. microsoft.co.uk)? 6a. Do you allow individuals to register names or just organisations? b. If you differentiate between individuals and organisations, what are your criteria? 7a. Do you require proof of identity? b. If so, how do you prove the identity of a requestor? 8. Do you register domains only for organisations/individuals located in your country or do you allow anyone to register in your tld? 9a. Do you allow a single organisation to register more than one domain? b. If so, do you limit the number of domains registered by a single organisation? 10a.To whom would you allocate well known names like digital.tld/ digital.sub.tld? b.What criteria do you use when deciding whether or not to allow a name? 11a.How do you arbitrate between two or more claims to the same name? b.Who is responsible for the arbitration? 12a.Do you allow the registration of geographical names (cities, countries, rivers, etc)? b.If so, would you register one for an individual organisation? 13a.Do you have any names which may not be registered (e.g. names in bad taste, names of protocols, etc)? 14a.Do you run secondary nameservice for subdomains of the tld? b.If so, is this optional/mandatory and do you charge for the service? 15a.Do you check for a running nameserver at the time of request? b.Do you check for a running nameserver at regular intervals after the name has been delegated? 16. Do you allow the reservation of names (i.e. no running service)? 17a.Do you charge for reservation/registration of names? b.If so, is it a one off fee, an annual subscription or both? c.How much is the fee? 18a.Do you remove unused domain names? b.If so, how do you define an unused domain? 19. Do you think that the current system you operate will be changed over the next 12 months? 20. Do you accept requests for domains from providers only, from anyone or from a different group only? 21. What resources are allocated to the administration of the domain? 22. Do you have any automation of the registration/delegation process? Additions to original questionnaire 4c, 4d Christian Panigl (VUCC - ACOnet)

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RE: DNS Top Level Domain Questionnaire
by Christian Panigl, ACOnet/UniVie +43 1 4065822-383 08 Nov '95

08 Nov '95

>Date: Mon, 6 Nov 1995 06:31:45 +0000 (GMT) >From: Guy Davies <guyd(a)pipex.net> > >Response to the questionnaire has, so far, been a bit disappointing. I >have received only eight filled in questionnaires. Dear Guy, sorry for beeing late, we just finished our answers after circulating them through all involved people. You got the answers for AT a few minutes ago. Because of the fact that not all TLD registries were positively participating in this effort, we would strongly suggest, that only those parties who DID respond are getting the result. We are seeing the collection of answers to this first "European TLD Questionnaire" as an internal working paper to the *actively* interested and participating part of the DNS-WG and not to be published to a broader audience. If you decide to publish an URL to whatever larger community please exclude our information (for AT) ! As soon as the situation has stabilized we will provide you with a paper which might be included in your public collection. Kind regards, Christian --- Christian Panigl : Vienna University Computer Center - ACOnet --- --- VUCC - ACOnet : -------------------------------------------- --- --- Universitaetsstrasse 7 : Internet: Christian.Panigl(a)CC.UniVie.ac.at --- --- A-1010 Vienna / Austria : Tel: +43 1 4065822-383 (Fax: -170) ---

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DNS Top Level Domain Questionnaire
by Guy Davies 08 Nov '95

08 Nov '95

Hello again folks, Response to the questionnaire has, so far, been a bit disappointing. I have received only eight filled in questionnaires. To anyone who is delaying their response I would say, please return your filled in questionnaire as soon as possible so that the information can be quickly collated and prepared for publication. Despite some people's reservations to the usefulness of such a source of information, I consider it would be extremely useful as an initial reference. I take this position based on personal experience of trying to register domains in other countries and also of trying to help organise a useable 'NIC' system for the UK without any information or guidance from other countries' NICs. To those of you from whom I have received replies, thankyou again for spending the time. I hope to have something for publication in the next few weeks (providing I get some more replies quickly) and I will publish the URL to this group once the page is available. I look forward to your responses in the near future. Regards, Guy Davies tel: 01223 250122 ---------- fax: 01223 250121 Network Support Engineer email: guyd(a)pipex.net Unipalm PIPEX url: http://www.pipex.net 216 Cambridge Science Park, Milton Road, Cambridge, CB4 4WA

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