DNS

An Open Letter to Yahoo!‘s Postmaster

In June 2004, Yahoo! and a number of other companies got together to announce the Anti-Spam Technical Alliance or ASTA. While it appears to have been largely silent since then, ASTA did at least publish an initial set of best practices the widespread adoption of which could possibly have had some impact on spam... The majority of these are clearly aimed at ISPs and end users, but some are either generally or specifically relevant to email providers such as Yahoo!, Google or Microsoft... The problem: Since February this year, we have been receiving a significant quantity of spam emails from Yahoo!'s servers. In addition to their transport via the Yahoo! network, all originate from email addresses in yahoo.com, yahoo.co.uk and one or two other Yahoo! domains. Every such message bears a Yahoo! DomainKeys signature... more

Domain Name Dispute Puts Dot-Ca in the Spotlight

My weekly Law Bytes column (freely available hyperlinked version, Toronto Star version) focuses on the recent Canadian parliamentary discussion on domain name disputes. As discussed about ten days ago, the impetus for governmental interest in domain name disputes and Internet governance is the registration of several domain names bearing the names of sitting Members of Parliament by the Defend Marriage Coalition, an opponent of same-sex marriage legislation. The resulting websites, which include donboudria.ca and davidmcguinty.ca, include MP contact information, photos, and advocacy materials. more

Sponsored TLD Unnecessary? Ron Andruff Responds to Forrester Research

A recent report released by Forrester Research last week has put the .travel sponsored top-level domain under the microscope -- calling the sTLD "Nice, But Not Necessary". Although this 4-page report (sold for US$49.00) has singled out the .travel domain, its critical arguments might very well apply to the nature of most sponsored top-level domains currently in existence -- or under review: '.mobi', '.jobs', '.museum', '.coop', '.xxx' and others. CircleID has invited Ron Andruff, President and CEO of Tralliance, the registry for .travel, to respond to arguments made in this report. more

An Unsanctioned Whois Database

Mark Jeftovic of easyDNS Technologies Inc. has posted an item on ICANN's "GNSO" registrars' mailing list titled "unsanctioned Whois concepts". In that item he suggests that the control and actual publication of contact information about a domain be put into the zone file itself, a file maintained by the registrant (purchasor) of the domain name. more

Rhetorical Questions on IDN TLD Approaches

With the IGF underway, there's a lot of discussion surrounding Internationalized Domain Names (IDN). There has been lots of great progress in IDN technology with IE7 and Firefox browsers now fully IDN-Aware, strong IDN registrations and websites behind them. Now that many of the hurdles to implementation have been addressed to where the technology is either currently available to most internet users, or shall be soon, we now focus to the other aspects of IDN... more

Using Domain Filtering To Effect IP Address Filtering

In Taking Back The DNS I described new technology in ISC BIND as of Version 9.8.0 that allows a recursive server operator to import DNS filtering rules in what ISC hopes will become the standard interchange format for DNS policy information. Later I had to decry the possible use of this technology for mandated content blocking such as might soon be the law of the land in my country. I'm a guest at MAAWG this week in San Francisco and one of the most useful hallway discussions I've been in so far was about the Spamhaus DROP list. more

TLD Registration Enforcement: A Call for Automation - Part I

The past year has brought a rise in so-called "open and chartered" top-level domains (TLDs). Like the traditional open TLDs of .COM, .NET, and .ORG, these namespaces encourage large-scale registrations, but they differ in that they limit who can legitimately register domains. So far, many thousands of their registrations seem to break the stated rules. It's therefore worth thinking through their respective enforcement efforts -- before the situation gets out of control. more

United Nations Establishes Working Group on Internet Governance

Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced today the members of the United Nations Working Group on Internet Governance, which is to prepare the ground for a decision on this contentious issue by the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society in 2005. The establishment of the Working Group was requested by the first phase of the Summit, held in Geneva last December. At that time, countries agreed to continue the dialogue on the management of the Internet, at both the technical and policy levels. more

Have You Monitored Your DNS Performance Lately?

Domain Name System (DNS) surveys such as that recently conducted by Men & Mice continually demonstrate that the DNS is riddled with errors. Since the DNS continues to work, this raises three questions:

1. Does it matter that the DNS is riddled with errors?
2. Why is it riddled with errors?
3. How can it be fixed? more

New Paper Discusses Global City TLD’s in the Public Interest

"The Internet's impact on cities grows daily as it electronically enables the meeting, movement, and exchange of people, ideas, products, and cultures at a range and frequency never before possible, creating what Marshall McLuhan called the 'global village'." So begins a paper in which Dr. Michael Gurstein and I present a short review of the history of TLDs and the negative effects their omission from the Internet's naming schema is having on cities. We then identify 12 areas where city-TLDs will benefit Global Cities if planned and developed in the public interest. more

Paul Vixie in Response to Site Finder Controversy

As a domain holder myself (of vix.com), I would not have chosen ".com" for my parent domain name back in 1988 had there been a wildcard domain name [that activates Site Finder service] under ".com". The risk of someone attempting to reach me but ending up talking to someone else instead would have been seen as "too great". I am now searching for a new parent domain whose publisher will guarantee me, in perpetuity, that there will be no wildcard name as there now is in "com". more

Making Sense of the Domain Name Market - and Its Future

With ever more TLDs, where does it make sense to focus resources? After four years and a quadrupling of internet extensions, what metrics continue to make sense in the domain name industry? Which should we discard? And how do you gain understanding of this expanded market? For registries, future success is dependent on grasping the changes that have already come. For registrars, it is increasingly important to identify winners and allocate resources accordingly. The question is: how? more

Security and Fort N.O.C.‘s

In an article by MSNBC called "Fort N.O.C.'s" [Network Operating Center] Brock N. Meeks reports: "The unassuming building that houses the "A" root sits in a cluster of three others; the architecture looks as if it were lifted directly from a free clip art library. No signs or markers give a hint that the Internet's most precious computer is inside humming happily away in a hermetically sealed room. This building complex could be any of a 100,000 mini office parks littering middle class America." ...It is hardly the "most precious computer"!!!  more

Ireland’s .ie To Come Under Government Control

The Irish domain registry (IEDR) is to come under the control of the Commission for Communications Regulation ComReg. At present the registry is managed by a "not-for-profit" company, however it has come under increasing criticism with regard to both its management and policies. Although there are approximately 40,000 IE domains currently registered, it is still one of the strictest and most expensive ccTLDs in the world. more

Will Blocking a TLD Fracture the Internet?

In his eloquent dissent against approving .XXX, ICANN Board member George Sadowsky talked about blocking and filtering top-level domains. It's a concise statement of a concern that has been identified by various people, including members of the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC), as an impediment to the new generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) program. It's a thorough defense of a common point of view about blocking TLDs, but while no-one can disagree about the fact of blocking, what is the actual effect? more