-----Original Message----- From: Martin B. Schwimmer <martys at interport.net> <snip>

Your client asks you what to do. What do you tell him?

It depends. Today the answer might be to look for another .COM name. Next month the answer might be to select another TLD. http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/domainname/130dftmail/unir.txt If new TLDs are not added to the legacy Root Name Servers controlled by the U.S. Government then we all might as well agree that .COM is the new root or "dot" as some might say. This atually has some technical merit. Unfortunately, it would make all of the other non-COM TLDs worthless at some point. With ALL of the names under the .COM root, software developers would likely move quickly to a position where .COM disappears. We have already seen that trend with browsers. They assume that you want WWW.%name.COM. Would you prefer to have the entire DNS pushed down one level under .COM ? If you do that, then you effectively have 2,000,000+ TLDs. ATT, IBM, SUN, MICROSOFT, etc. all would have their own. The people with the generic words line .COMPUTER or .SYSTEMS would likely emerge to become the TLD registries. People would then be able to move to "grab" SUN.SYSTEMS.COM. but the .COM would not show up, it would be hidden by all popular software. Now, what does the Sun Microsystems do about the company that ends up with SUN.SYSTEMS ? How about SUN.OIL which would really be SUN.OIL.COM ? As I see it, you have two choices, expand the root or make .COM the root. Pick one. We can not have it both ways. Keep in mind that if the root is not expanded, then non-COM TLDs (like .UK) might as well close their doors. Is that what you want ? Again, there are two choices...this is not rocket science... Jim Fleming Unir Corporation - http://www.unir.com End-2-End: VPC(Java)---C+ at ---<IPv8>---C+ at ---(Java)VPC http://www.ddj.com/index/author/idx10133.htm -------- Logged at Mon Sep 14 11:04:12 MET DST 1998 ---------