4 ms·
The thing is, by definition, the registry is a monopoly for a certain TLD. So the idea was that those registries need to be regulated. What if they would just a
by phicoh 7y ago
The thing is, by definition, the registry is a monopoly for a certain TLD. So the idea was that those registries need to be regulated. What if they would just ask insane prices?
A registry has an 'easy' part, and that is actually maintaining a list of names and associated data, and providing that as DNS zones.
The hard part is dealing with individual customers. Providing service, collecting money, etc.
So the idea at the time was to have lots of registrars competing on what service they provide for what price and having more or less regulated registries that provide a fixed service at an agreed price.
By and large this system worked.
Early on, it was not clear if large zones like .com would actually scale. So there was some restraint of registering silly names, because that could lead to problems.
At some point, computers got fast enough and big enough memories that large zones were no longer a serious worry and everybody moved in to get all the nice domains.
- walshemj 7y agoNot so easy the technical requirements are not cheap and are quite rightly demanding - ie you can survive the continent failure mode.
- phicoh 7y agoFor big zones it is relatively cheap (i.e, the cost per domain is low). Since the invention of anycast routing, it is technically no longer complex. If a continent fails, then either all BGP announcements are already gone, or you need a way to stop them. Then traffic will be routed to other continents. It is not trivial, but for big zones if you get 1 euro per domain per year, you can do a lot of stuff. And that is the sort of prices people cared about back then. On the other hand, providing support, nobody has any idea how to spec that. What is a reasonable cost? The same goes for payment options.
- walshemj 7y agowhen I worked for .coop it was multiple ha systems per continent in all four main continents.
- neilv 7y agoI'd say the many-registrar-middlepersons approach system worked badly. All we needed was the registry to do very straightforward things, under contract. Instead, we got additional complexity and inefficiency, gobs of money being handed out to opportunists, people newly arriving to the Internet interfacing with certain "registrars" that used dark patterns to upsell, whois frontends rumored (and I've seen this myself) to grab the domain you're checking and then offer to sell it at an inflated price, and typically the domain name you wanted for your startup or other project was already registered by a squatter (I saw this many times) requiring you either to pay up the gouging scalper rates or keep trying to outpace the dictionary combinatorics attacks, and domain names more accessible to the deep-pocketed.
- icedchai 7y agoYes, they had this before 1997. There were no registrars. The InterNIC / registry was it...
- phicoh 7y agoThink about the current state of ICANN. And now ICANN has to award contracts to monopolies for gTLDs like .com and .net. What could possibly go wrong? The registry part is easy to specify. For the registrar, look at how google normally operates: everything they can automate works well and is cheap. As soon as something goes wrong and the they lock you out of an account it becomes hopeless. Imagine that google would be the only registrar for .com or .net Of course, with a free market come shady parties. But with a bit of effort it is possible to find registrars that work quite well. With just one monopoly per gTLD, it is likely that bad things will happen in the long run.
- neilv 7y agoI don't know why we're still talking about monopolies. It should be a contracted clerical registry doing a very straightforward thing, according to rules.
- phicoh 7y agoReality is that this lasts for a few years. And then the contracted party finds ways to raise prices or make a mess or both. Look at the history of decisions taken by ICANN. Contracts get awarded with hardly influence from the larger internet community.