- tld-wg - mailman.ripe.net

Should Two Letter TLDs Be Immune ?
by JimFleming＠doorstep.unety.net 28 Apr '98

28 Apr '98

On Monday, April 27, 1998 12:37 PM, Steve Heflin[SMTP:steve at domainbank.net] wrote: @Why don't we establish a set of guidelines or purported guidelines we feel @may be pertinent, *then* move forward with issues regarding each? @ You might want to "suggest" that 2 letter TLD registries get on-board with some whois technology. There are several choices out there. RIPE is Perl-based. NSI's offering is compiled C. I believe that NSI and Microsoft recently announced some sort of joint partnership in this area. If we look at the Internet as one huge object-oriented computer system, then many of the registry data base issues would fall out. Unfortunately, most of the emphasis in the Internet is still on "Protocols" vs. "Platforms". If we could change this, we might be able to help make it easier for the 2 letter TLD registries who likely just want something that is turn-key and works without requiring an Internet mechanic to be on call. - Jim Fleming Unir Corporation IBC, Tortola, BVI http://www.nic.vi -------- Logged at Tue Apr 28 08:48:17 MET DST 1998 ---------

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Should Two Letter TLDs Be Immune ?
by JimFleming＠doorstep.unety.net 28 Apr '98

28 Apr '98

Yes, voluntary participation is the best way to go, plus local "neighbor net" approaches. That is one of the ways that I propose to build CARIBNIC.NET. It will be a way to link all of the participants in the Internet in the Caribbean. This can help everyone understand how the Internet resources are being managed via a common pooling of information for the TLDs and IP allocations for the region. JF On Monday, April 27, 1998 4:00 PM, Steve Heflin[SMTP:steve at domainbank.net] wrote: @It goes back to the original comment. @ @Good idea, we can suggest it but we cannot force them to do it. @ @On Mon, 27 Apr 1998, Jim Fleming wrote: @ @> On Monday, April 27, 1998 12:37 PM, Steve Heflin[SMTP:steve at domainbank.net] wrote: @> @Why don't we establish a set of guidelines or purported guidelines we feel @> @may be pertinent, *then* move forward with issues regarding each? @> @ @> @[not purposely avoiding the question] ;) @> @ @> @> One of the things that I have advocated in the past @> is the 2+2+4 Trustee structure. This is a structure @> that allows 8 people to be identified as the delegates @> of a resource such as a TLD. @> @> 5_________ @> 3_________ @> 6_________ @> 1_________ @> 2_________ @> 7_________ @> 4_________ @> 8_________ @> @> @> With this structure the people in the #1 and #2 positions @> are viewed as the co-Trustees and share the job. They @> speak for the TLD when an official statement is needed. @> Each of them has an assistant (#3 and #4). Then each @> of those people has two people to help provide more @> community coverage and voices. @> @> I wonder if each of the 2 letter TLDs could publish such @> a list ? @> @> @> - @> Jim Fleming @> Unir Corporation @> IBC, Tortola, BVI @> @> http://www.nic.vi @> @> @ @Regards @ @Steve Heflin @Domain Bank, Inc. @IDomains, Inc. @ @ @ - Jim Fleming Unir Corporation IBC, Tortola, BVI http://www.nic.vi -------- Logged at Tue Apr 28 04:44:13 MET DST 1998 ---------

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Should Two Letter TLDs Be Immune ?
by JimFleming＠doorstep.unety.net 28 Apr '98

28 Apr '98

On Monday, April 27, 1998 12:37 PM, Steve Heflin[SMTP:steve at domainbank.net] wrote: @Why don't we establish a set of guidelines or purported guidelines we feel @may be pertinent, *then* move forward with issues regarding each? @ @[not purposely avoiding the question] ;) @ One of the things that I have advocated in the past is the 2+2+4 Trustee structure. This is a structure that allows 8 people to be identified as the delegates of a resource such as a TLD. 5_________ 3_________ 6_________ 1_________ 2_________ 7_________ 4_________ 8_________ With this structure the people in the #1 and #2 positions are viewed as the co-Trustees and share the job. They speak for the TLD when an official statement is needed. Each of them has an assistant (#3 and #4). Then each of those people has two people to help provide more community coverage and voices. I wonder if each of the 2 letter TLDs could publish such a list ? - Jim Fleming Unir Corporation IBC, Tortola, BVI http://www.nic.vi -------- Logged at Tue Apr 28 03:00:56 MET DST 1998 ---------

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Should Two Letter TLDs Be Immune ?
by JimFleming＠doorstep.unety.net 28 Apr '98

28 Apr '98

On Monday, April 27, 1998 1:04 PM, John Charles Broomfield[SMTP:jbroom at manta.outremer.com] wrote: <snip For you and me a mismanaged TLD is probably something @important which should be dealt with. Some governments probably can't see @the importance of it (yet?), but that doesn't give legitimacy to someone @from outside trying to take it over. @ Just as the computer security experts will tell you.... the people on the "outside" may not be nearly as big a problem as the people on the "inside". While I understand the history of the 2 letter TLDs, I am not sure that you can enforce anything beyond what will become common in the generic TLDs. Also, in the end the Root Name Server Cluster operators make the decision and they may not know who has the endorsement of the government and who does not. Would you be in favor of requiring that some "official" statement/letter/etc. from a real government official be scanned and placed on the web site ? - Jim Fleming Unir Corporation IBC, Tortola, BVI http://www.nic.vi -------- Logged at Tue Apr 28 00:56:10 MET DST 1998 ---------

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Should Two Letter TLDs Be Immune ?
by JimFleming＠doorstep.unety.net 28 Apr '98

28 Apr '98

On Monday, April 27, 1998 11:57 AM, John Charles Broomfield[SMTP:jbroom at manta.outremer.com] wrote: @ @Hi Jim, @ @> People seem to have no problem allowing the 2 letter TLDs @> to be grandfathered to have immunity from the Green Paper @> and the U.S. Government. The assumption appears to be @> that the 2 letter TLDs have been delegated to individuals, @> companies and in some cases governments with care. This @> is not necessarily the case. @ <snip> @The unwritten (is it not yet official?) addendum to RFC-1591 gives ultimate @authority in 2 letter TLDs to the government of that area. @This in fact means that the local government is sovereign for how any given @2 letter TLD is run. You seem to be making the assumption that the 2 letter TLDs are delegated to people endorsed/supervised by the government that the TLD supposedly is assigned to...is that the case ? - Jim Fleming Unir Corporation IBC, Tortola, BVI http://www.nic.vi -------- Logged at Mon Apr 27 23:18:35 MET DST 1998 ---------

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Should Two Letter TLDs Be Immune ?
by JimFleming＠doorstep.unety.net 27 Apr '98

27 Apr '98

On Monday, April 27, 1998 12:17 PM, Steve Heflin[SMTP:steve at domainbank.net] wrote: <snip> @ @Now, making a statement of registry guidelines and recommendations, that @is good idea. How do we proceed? @> For starters, I think that the contact information for the TLD should be an actual government contact. The problem that I see with this is that it may be very difficult to find anyone in some of the government agencies that knows anything about the TLD delegation or the Registry Industry. What would you do in that case ? Will there be two-letter TLDs that are non-government ? (i.e. privately held) - Jim Fleming Unir Corporation IBC, Tortola, BVI http://www.nic.vi -------- Logged at Mon Apr 27 23:38:19 MET DST 1998 ---------

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Should Two Letter TLDs Be Immune ?
by JimFleming＠doorstep.unety.net 27 Apr '98

27 Apr '98

People seem to have no problem allowing the 2 letter TLDs to be grandfathered to have immunity from the Green Paper and the U.S. Government. The assumption appears to be that the 2 letter TLDs have been delegated to individuals, companies and in some cases governments with care. This is not necessarily the case. In my opinion, the 2 letter TLDs should be treated as generic tags and should not be given a pass when it comes to requirements for stable governance and operational excellence. If this is not done, consumers may be mislead that 2 letter TLDs have the same industry oversight via the IANA Inc. and self-regulation. Consumers may find that they are subjected to arbitrary policies, predatory price increases and shoddy operations unless they are warned that 2 letter TLDs are immune from IANA Inc. oversight. This will not be a good thing and may cause well-run 2 letter TLDs to suffer because of the unsatisfactory practices of a few, poorly managed 2 letter TLDs. Of course, part of the problem is defining what poorly managed means. In some parts of the world business practices may be tolerated that are not common in the U.S. For example, people may choose to discriminate based on a variety of reasons. One of the most obvious is that companies supporting the government obtain <SLD>.TLD registrations and those that do not are excluded. Much of this assumes that the government is the current delegate of the 2 letter TLDs. As the domain name debates rage on we find more and more that governments do not have a clue what is happening with the 2 letter TLD that was supposedly delegated to them. Instead, we find that the 2 letter TLDs have been casually delegated to people and companies that gave the right impression of representing the government or local people but who actually use the TLD for their own business purposes. None of these things can be easily fixed and there may be no need to fix them IF the consumer is alerted to this situation. Unfortunately, the Green Paper and the IANA Inc. might end up sending the wrong message if they require generic TLDs to be held to one standard while 2 letter TLDs are immune. In my opinion, all of the TLDs should be held to the same high standards of business ethics and operational integrity as agreed upon by the Registry Industry. The question remains as to how to do this...? To date much of the focus has been on ADDING TLDs to the legacy Root Name Servers that the U.S. Government supports. Before TLDs are added, there may have to be a review of the existing TLDs to see where they stand from a business ethics and operational standards point of view. In some cases, 2 letter TLDs may need to be removed from the legacy Root Name Servers. How this should be handled needs to be debated by the people actively involved in the Registry Industry. - Jim Fleming Unir Corporation IBC, Tortola, BVI http://www.nic.vi -------- Logged at Mon Apr 27 22:47:06 MET DST 1998 ---------

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Proposal for distribution of WHOIS data
by schneider＠switch.ch 23 Apr '98

23 Apr '98

Logistical and legal matters are intended to be covered by this proposal. A. Stage 1: Distribution to safe place ----------------------------------- The registries are encouraged to transfer entire WHOIS records to one or more places which are recognized as central repositories (REP). This could be RIPE/APNIC/ARIN, the new to be formed ccTLD organizations (like RIPE CENTR) and for gTLD's their corresponding organizations (e.g. CORE/InterNIC) or some other agreed upon sites. Transfer could either be from a registry to the REP's or vice versa, by means of file transfer, mirroring or other, but the entire process (storage at registry, transfer and storage at REP) should be reasonably well protected. B. Stage 2: Distribution to the public ----------------------------------- Contractors to the registries should be allowed to disseminate above WHOIS data to the public and to extract certain data from them according to their needs (e.g. to provide overviews, to watch the registration of marks etc.). Let's call these contractors DIST. The DIST should be required to a) agree on an AUP (Acceptable Use Policy) set up by the registries and to include the AUP with any data published by DIST. b) sign a contract with the REP's where use of data, access to data, responsibilities, price, origin of data, periodicity of gathering data, non-disclosed data etc. is stated. Any statistics extracted by DIST's are unofficial unless approved by the registries. The registries may derive stats by themselves through REP's which are then official. Above proposal should ensure distribution of WHOIS data in a well controlled manner and should protect registrants from misuse of their (personal) data. Use of WHOIS data for advertising or other commercial activities and/or for unsolicited mail is considered as abuse and should be avoided. In addition, the proposal may encourage the development of other technical facilities to present and distribute WHOIS data to the public (e.g. LDAP) and may have consequences to current and future WHOIS implementations (e.g. referral WHOIS data base, RWHOIS) and may lead to improved facilities for the public (e.g. fuzzy matches when only partial information is known like location and type of business). Examples: -------- Existing global WHOIS searches: http://www.netnames.com http://www.allwhois.com Existing AUP's: http://www.ripe.net/db/dbcopyright.html http://www.nic.ch/whois_readme.html Existing contracts: I'm only aware of 2: Nominet and SWITCH. The latter's contract is only available on paper. Marcel -------- Logged at Mon Apr 27 22:26:02 MET DST 1998 ---------

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FW: Structuring the Root
by Jay＠Iperdome.com 23 Apr '98

23 Apr '98

At 11:45 PM 4/20/98 +0100, Berislav Todorovic wrote: >* IP address allocation/assignment process is totally independent of > domain name delegations. IP address management hierarchy (IANA -> > Regional IRs -> ISPs/LIRs -> End users) is a logical consequence of the > hierarchy of the global routing system. Only a small fraction of the IP address space is allocated in this manner. Based on the limited information that I've seen, only about 30 /8s have been delegated to the regional IRs. A large portion of the IP address space has been allocated directly to some large, independent organizations, and a large portion remains available to the IANA for future allocations. Is this not accurate? Regards, Jay Fenello President, Iperdome, Inc. 404-250-3242 http://www.iperdome.com -------- Logged at Thu Apr 23 11:28:46 MET DST 1998 ---------

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FW: Round Table vs. Hierarchy
by JimFleming＠doorstep.unety.net 21 Apr '98

21 Apr '98

---------- From: Jim Fleming[SMTP:JimFleming] Sent: Tuesday, April 21, 1998 7:23 AM To: 'arin-council at arin.net'; 'BBURR at ntia.doc.gov'; 'Ira_C._Magaziner at oa.eop.gov'; 'ARIN list' Cc: 'Tony Rutkowski'; 'Bala Pillai'; 'Christopher Ambler'; 'Gordon Cook'; 'Doug Humphrey'; 'John Gilmore'; 'Rey Blanco'; 'Jay at Iperdome.com'; 'John Charles Broomfield'; 'John Curran'; 'Jim Dixon'; 'Jeff Williams'; 'Karl Auerbach'; 'Karl Denninger'; 'KathrynKL'; 'Ken Fockler'; 'Kent Crispin'; 'Kim Hubbard'; 'John C Klensin'; 'Marc Hurst'; 'Michael Dillon'; 'Peter Deutsch'; 'Phil Howard'; 'Robert Raisch'; 'Richard J. Sexton'; 'Roeland M.J. Meyer'; 'Robert Shaw'; 'Robert L. Shearing'; 'Simon Higgs'; 'Scott Bradner'; 'Steve Wolff'; 'steve'; 'vinton g. cerf' Subject: Round Table vs. Hierarchy It appears that most parties involved in the planning of Internet Governance are more comfortable with evolving ARIN away from the IANA than using the ARIN structure as a basis to build the start of a Round Table structure with three "equal" partners, ARIANA, APNIC and RIPE. Surprisingly, even the people involved with ARIN appear to prefer the hierarchy structure. The two structures can be illustrated in the following crude stick diagrams. ==== Round Table Structure ===== ARIN / IANA \ / \ / \ APNIC-------------RIPE =========================== ==== Hierarchy Structure ======= IANA / | \ / | \ / | \ APNIC ARIN RIPE =========================== In the Round Table structure each participant at the table represents a historical collection of Internet resources (DNs, IPs, ASNs, etc.) and there is no central authority. More participants can be added to the Round Table as the Internet grows. When more than three participants are included a fully meshed commuication structure can be implemented via the Internet to help ensure that all participants are equals. This takes work, but in my opinion it is worth the effort. The Hierarchy takes less work. As shown above, the IANA (Inc.) plays a central coordination role and the regional registries are equals with each other, but not the IANA. The Hierarchy can be scaled by adding participants, but it is difficult to scale the IANA. This has been part of the problem with Internet Governance during the past few years. Despite the problems with the Hierarchy approach, it appears that most parties are more comfortable with that approach than the Round Table approach. Given that, the U.S. Government now has the difficult job of separating the ARIN and IANA tasks to allow ARIN to move to an arm's length position from the IANA Inc. It is unclear whether this will require the IANA to move away from ARIN or whether ARIN will move away from the IANA. They are currently intertwined, especially at the server, data base and operations level. Given that it appears that the ARIN Board and Advisory Council prefer to be part of the Hierarchy approach, it will be up to them to distance themselves from the IANA. This will require significant operational changes at ARIN. As a start, ARIN should deploy its own IN-ADDR.ARPA servers which can then be delegated parts of the IPv4 address space. This will distance ARIN from the legacy Root Name Servers operated by the U.S. Government and place it at arm's length. In the current situation, ARIN is using the USG roots for IN-ADDR.ARPA. The other two regional registries (RIPE and APNIC) are delegated parts of the IPv4 space. ARIN is not, because ARIN is tightly coupled with the IANA. This has to change. Since I am not an advocate of the Hierarchy approach, I will defer to other experts who seem to think that they can build a successful Internet using that centralized structure. I hope that they begin to enter these open forums to explain in detail how they intend to make this happen. It will be interesting to "watch" this metamorphosis take place. Note the emphasis on the word...watch... - Jim Fleming Unir Corporation IBC, Tortola, BVI -------- Logged at Thu Apr 23 00:04:40 MET DST 1998 ---------

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