9 ms·

If anything costs should have gone down. Bandwidth is cheaper, and processing power has gone up. However, even with that DNS has been pretty distributed by des

by anfilt 7y ago

If anything costs should have gone down. Bandwidth is cheaper, and processing power has gone up. However, even with that DNS has been pretty distributed by design. Lowering system load at the top level to begin with. Like some country code domains are managed by a pretty small number people to begin with. So it's not like you need a large amount of staff either.

AJ007 7y ago
The problem is lower registration prices mean more registrations and renewals, aka squatting. It is hard to say what direction or price point is either optimal or fair.
- colejohnson66 7y ago
  Domain squatters will exist no matter what. It’s just a business that exists to resell stuff. Price goes up, and their price will go up.
- dsl 7y ago
  > more registrations and renewals, aka squatting People falsely equate any domain they can't register and doesn't have a website with squatting. I get at least one angry email from someone a month trying to buy a domain that only has MX (mail) records. Another is a 3 letter .com I use for my internal lab environment, and I explicitly don't want it to resolve on the public Internet.
  - GauntletWizard 7y ago
    I'd call, without the slightest of doubt, the latter to be squatting. Maybe ICANN should specify a shorter internal lab domain (There's already .local for your use, which I would think is plenty short, even adding a prefix), but I would most certainly say that given there's only ~50,000 2 or 3-letter domains, the price for one should be high enough to make an individual flinch.
    - henvic 7y ago
      Come on. Squatting is when you're doing som with the purpose of reselling. If you just were lucky and registered a 3 letter domain back in the 90s, why is it anyone else business? Let it be. I have got a 5-letter domain myself that I keep a website of mine that never worked out online mostly for portfolio and because I really like the domain name. I've no plans to sell the domain or free it so others can register, even though it could indeed be more useful for some other stuff. Well, if someday I want to launch a company, I might as well brand it with this name. For the time being, it's no one's business.
      - GauntletWizard 7y ago
        You know, I do agree and respect that, but I also see that these are a (artificial) constrained resource - There's value in them. They're a constrained public good, and prices should be charged appropriately - And yeah, I think that the really short domain names should be $XXXX per year to renew, if not more. Squatting isn't just with the purpose of reselling. It's an overloaded phrase, from "living in someone's building illegally" to "Holding onto a good with the intent of depriving others of it's use, driving the price up (particularly if you control a large portion of the limited resource)", which are, in many ways, exact opposites (The hobo sleeping in an abandoned property and the landlord underutilizing that property so they can benefit from the scarcity of land are both "squatting") I'd say that the mild foresight that 3 letter domains are useful and then holding on to one because, even though you're barely using it, you don't want to give it up - Yeah, that's squatting. It's a minor dick move, though I'd say that dumb stuff like littering newspapers or not tipping your waiter is probably the greater offense. I'm also fine with how things are now, because I don't have any illusions that ICANN as currently stands would put that additional revenue to good use, but I'd like to see this treated... well, I'd compare it to water rights, but those are broken just as badly.
        majormajor 7y ago
        > And yeah, I think that the really short domain names should be $XXXX per year to renew, if not more. There's damage to the internet from "evicting" people from these domains. Broken links, etc. Sure, that doesn't apply in this "intentionally unused" case, but... who's currently incurring what damages? Why try to squeeze more dollars out of folks with these domain names? I'm suspicious of ideas to replicate the physical real-estate model of pushing people out through raising rents that seems to just benefit landlords and the already-wealthy.
  - davchana 7y ago
    I support you using any domain for any purpose, as you are the owner. Nobody else should be telling you or punishing you for using a shorter domain for non-web use.f
pmart123 7y ago
From a technical standpoint, what would the risk be if Verisign screwed up? If they could only afford low rate engineers, would the risk go up significantly?
- anfilt 7y ago
  That depends on the failure. Plus what recovery methods, redundancy, and backups they have. However, even at current prices verasign should have no problem paying decent engineers. Especially considering the number of registrations. However, the distributed nature dns does protect against a lot blunders unless they persist for long enough for caches to invalidate. The largest concern would be bad backups of registration records. However, last I checked ICANN requires tld operators to keep backups and also submit those backups daily to ICANN. Plus other things so if the company/org goes belly up for some reason ICANN can manage it till they find someone else.
  - pmart123 7y ago
    Interesting. Thanks. Verisign's revenue per employee is definitely off the charts as is its operating margins. I remember reading this article though: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/28/seven-people-keys-worldwide-internet-security-web https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/28/seven-peo... In some ways, it seems like the potential risks warrant Verisign to have a strong financial incentive given the problems we've seen at PG&E (if Verisign can also be considered a utility). Also, it does serve as a north star in regards to properly compensating companies or individuals who provide important protocols, infrastructure layers, and FOSS projects. How much that should be though is an interesting question.
    - anfilt 7y ago
      Like considering Versign's place on the web I would hope they have strong financials. However, 7% a year that's a bit much.

by anfilt 7y ago

AJ007 7y ago

The problem is lower registration prices mean more registrations and renewals, aka squatting. It is hard to say what direction or price point is either optimal or fair.

colejohnson66 7y ago
Domain squatters will exist no matter what. It’s just a business that exists to resell stuff. Price goes up, and their price will go up.
dsl 7y ago
> more registrations and renewals, aka squatting People falsely equate any domain they can't register and doesn't have a website with squatting. I get at least one angry email from someone a month trying to buy a domain that only has MX (mail) records. Another is a 3 letter .com I use for my internal lab environment, and I explicitly don't want it to resolve on the public Internet.
- GauntletWizard 7y ago
  I'd call, without the slightest of doubt, the latter to be squatting. Maybe ICANN should specify a shorter internal lab domain (There's already .local for your use, which I would think is plenty short, even adding a prefix), but I would most certainly say that given there's only ~50,000 2 or 3-letter domains, the price for one should be high enough to make an individual flinch.
  - henvic 7y ago
    Come on. Squatting is when you're doing som with the purpose of reselling. If you just were lucky and registered a 3 letter domain back in the 90s, why is it anyone else business? Let it be. I have got a 5-letter domain myself that I keep a website of mine that never worked out online mostly for portfolio and because I really like the domain name. I've no plans to sell the domain or free it so others can register, even though it could indeed be more useful for some other stuff. Well, if someday I want to launch a company, I might as well brand it with this name. For the time being, it's no one's business.
    - GauntletWizard 7y ago
      You know, I do agree and respect that, but I also see that these are a (artificial) constrained resource - There's value in them. They're a constrained public good, and prices should be charged appropriately - And yeah, I think that the really short domain names should be $XXXX per year to renew, if not more. Squatting isn't just with the purpose of reselling. It's an overloaded phrase, from "living in someone's building illegally" to "Holding onto a good with the intent of depriving others of it's use, driving the price up (particularly if you control a large portion of the limited resource)", which are, in many ways, exact opposites (The hobo sleeping in an abandoned property and the landlord underutilizing that property so they can benefit from the scarcity of land are both "squatting") I'd say that the mild foresight that 3 letter domains are useful and then holding on to one because, even though you're barely using it, you don't want to give it up - Yeah, that's squatting. It's a minor dick move, though I'd say that dumb stuff like littering newspapers or not tipping your waiter is probably the greater offense. I'm also fine with how things are now, because I don't have any illusions that ICANN as currently stands would put that additional revenue to good use, but I'd like to see this treated... well, I'd compare it to water rights, but those are broken just as badly.
      - majormajor 7y ago
        > And yeah, I think that the really short domain names should be $XXXX per year to renew, if not more. There's damage to the internet from "evicting" people from these domains. Broken links, etc. Sure, that doesn't apply in this "intentionally unused" case, but... who's currently incurring what damages? Why try to squeeze more dollars out of folks with these domain names? I'm suspicious of ideas to replicate the physical real-estate model of pushing people out through raising rents that seems to just benefit landlords and the already-wealthy.
- davchana 7y ago
  I support you using any domain for any purpose, as you are the owner. Nobody else should be telling you or punishing you for using a shorter domain for non-web use.f

pmart123 7y ago

From a technical standpoint, what would the risk be if Verisign screwed up? If they could only afford low rate engineers, would the risk go up significantly?

anfilt 7y ago
That depends on the failure. Plus what recovery methods, redundancy, and backups they have. However, even at current prices verasign should have no problem paying decent engineers. Especially considering the number of registrations. However, the distributed nature dns does protect against a lot blunders unless they persist for long enough for caches to invalidate. The largest concern would be bad backups of registration records. However, last I checked ICANN requires tld operators to keep backups and also submit those backups daily to ICANN. Plus other things so if the company/org goes belly up for some reason ICANN can manage it till they find someone else.
- pmart123 7y ago
  Interesting. Thanks. Verisign's revenue per employee is definitely off the charts as is its operating margins. I remember reading this article though: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/28/seven-people-keys-worldwide-internet-security-web https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/28/seven-peo... In some ways, it seems like the potential risks warrant Verisign to have a strong financial incentive given the problems we've seen at PG&E (if Verisign can also be considered a utility). Also, it does serve as a north star in regards to properly compensating companies or individuals who provide important protocols, infrastructure layers, and FOSS projects. How much that should be though is an interesting question.
  - anfilt 7y ago
    Like considering Versign's place on the web I would hope they have strong financials. However, 7% a year that's a bit much.