The IPv4 people have largely been funded by governments around the world. It should not be surprising that they have tied their future to the wishes of those governments. The recent news that the French Government wishes to take control of some of the TLDs for regions it controls, geographically, is not a surprise. There is more info on the .FR TLD and the people behind that TLD which is apparently the one that France wants to move .MQ and .GP under. In the IPv8 Plan, TLDs (and other Internet resources) are placed freely into the hands of the people. The TLDs are all equal. They are divided into 8 regions to allow people to more easily coordinate. The 8 regions are all equal. The TLDs have INTENTIONALLY been radomly placed within the regions to try to make sure that TLDs can stand on their own and not be captured by groups that want them to be "under them". http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/domainname/130dftmail/unir.txt To illustrate how the IPv8 Plan is intended to work, we can look at the real world situation where some people want the .MQ TLD deleted. In the IPv8 Plan a concept called "neighbor nets" is used to allow TLDs to benefit from the self-governance of the other TLDs that are in their neighborhood. In the case of Martinique, one might look at the neighborhood from Grenada (.GD) to the British Virgin Islands (.VG). 1:247 GD (GRENADA) 1:248 B (Single Letter TLD) 1:249 MINNEAPOLIS 1:250 MQ (MARTINIQUE) <----------- TO BE DELETED ? 1:251 PRINCETON 1:252 TCA (TURKS-AND-CAICOS-ISLANDS) 1:253 IDAHO 1:254 VG (VIRGIN-ISLANDS-(BRITISH)) If a super power is attempting to delete a small TLD like Martinique, then the other TLD managers in the "neighborhood" can come to Martinique's defense. Not only would this include the TLDs shown above but also all of the TLDs in the G1 Region. Even though people might find it strange for people in the .MINNEAPOLIS TLD or the .PRINCETON TLD to help Marinique, we have to realize that this is better than having the people in the .FR (France) TLD coming to the rescue because those people might be the very people that are trying to make .MQ go away. They may have financial reasons why they do not think .MQ should be allowed to exist. If it turns out that people are successful in convincing the RSCs to delete .MQ, then the 1:250 seat will be freed up to add a new TLD. The IPv8 address space 1:250.X.X.X.X would remain. Delegations under IN-ADDR.S250.G1 could remain, despite France's request for people's IP address allocations to be refused. In my opinion, it is not right to try to use the leverage of IP allocations to control the domain name industry. The IPv8 Plan attempts to prevent this. Hopefully, the RSCs around the world will come to some conclusion on how they intend to handle the .MQ TLD. Even though France carries a lot of political and economic weight, there still needs to be an element of the local decision making in both the real world and in cyberspace. I am confident that the collective reasoning of a broad group of people willl do the right thing about the .MQ TLD and the other TLDs that France wants removed. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ France top-level domain (FR-DOM) AFNIC (NIC France) c/o INRIA, Domaine de Voluceau Le Chesnay CEDEX, 78153 FRANCE Domain Name: FR Administrative Contact: Renard, Annie (AR41) Annie.Renard at INRIA.FR +33 01 39 63 55 92 (FAX) +33 01 39 63 55 34 Technical Contact, Zone Contact: Lubrano, Philippe (PL613) Philippe.Lubrano at INRIA.FR +33 1 39 63 56 82 (FAX) +33 1 39 63 55 34 @@@@@@ "La cellule du "NIC-France", relevant de l'Institut National de la Recherche en Informatique et en Automatismes (INRIA), a assuri la mise en place du domaine ".fr" par diligation de l'IANA. Depuis le 1er janvier 1998, cette gestion a iti transfirie ` une association dinommie "AFNIC" (Association Frangaise pour le Nommage Internet en Coopiration). Ses adhirents sont essentiellement des prestataires techniques (fournisseurs d'acchs et d'hibergement) et des utilisateurs. Il existe aujourd'hui un peu plus de 16.000 sites enregistris sous le ".fr". La redevance d'enregistrement est actuellement, en fonction de l'option choisie, d'environ 400 F, ` laquelle s'ajoute depuis cette annie une redevance annuelle de 100 F." @@@@@@ Jim Fleming Unir Corporation - http://www.unir.com End-2-End: VPC(Java)---C+ at ---<IPv8>---C+ at ---(Java)VPC http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/domainname/130dftmail/unir.txt http://www.ddj.com/index/author/idx10133.htm -------- Logged at Tue Sep 15 16:46:48 MET DST 1998 ---------