4 ms·

Does the current TLD system even make sense? There is a .amazon, a .google, a .cancerresearch, a .sex, a .rich (which costs thousands of dollars btw). Plenty o

Does the current TLD system even make sense? There is a .amazon, a .google, a .cancerresearch, a .sex, a .rich (which costs thousands of dollars btw). Plenty of them such as .io and .tv are all completely untethered from their original meanings/purposes. At this point, a website is just a string with a '.' in it somewhere. Instead of having 1500+ discretely decided upon TLDs why not just let people just create their own TLDs as long as they have a server to host the DNS?

mjayhn 7y ago
Because the lucky few on top of the tld chain are still making fortunes. Ironically I see the internet going back to keywords/search terms in the future (aol keywords). I hope the tld hegemony is eventually a distant memory.
edoceo 7y ago
Then https://www.opennic.org https://www.opennic.org is for you! Welcome friend!
- bluedevil2k 7y ago
  The .fur domain is ... interesting
  - echelon 7y ago
    That exists? It's probably all furries, then. Exit: I totally missed the GP post. OpenNic allows any TLD to be created.
- str34ml1n3 7y ago
  That's really cool, but none of the listed projects seem to work (e.g. grep.geek, post.uu, be.libre, opennic.chan...). Am I missing something? Do I have to do something special to access these domains?
  - edoceo 7y ago
    Yes, use an OpenNiC NS too.
- voldacar 7y ago
  I have no clue how I've never heard of this - this is really cool and there should be more stuff like it. We should not be in a world where 70s era bureaucratic committees liks iana and icann get to define the internet
searchableguy 7y ago
.rich seems like a great idea to earn shit ton of money.
- echelon 7y ago
  https://icannwiki.org/.rich https://icannwiki.org/.rich There are only 99 registered domains, a few of which are probably owned by the registry itself. At $2,500/yr/domain, they're not exactly making bank. The cost to maintain all of this probably eats into the profit a bit.
  - tialaramex 7y ago
    I'd be surprised if it even pays for itself. Running a gTLD is not intended to be cheap. $1M pa is the ballpark I've seen quoted. Lots of people had the idea that they'd get a million customers and so even at one dollar per customer they couldn't help but make money, the reality in a lot of cases was few customers and no route out. A handful of general purpose gTLDs work, there's one quite popular in Russia for example, using Cyrillic characters instead of Latin, they have a broad base of paying customers. Most of the rest are pure vanity and can be expected to have similar lifespan to a vanity .com domain. Some will be sold to speculators, some will be expensively dormant for years, many will be abandoned and forgotten. Mostly gTLDs were/ are a way for ICANN to make a lot of money exploring stupid people's greed.
    - DeathArrow 7y ago
      >Mostly gTLDs were/ are a way for ICANN to make a lot of money exploring stupid people's greed. In the '90s people told that buying lots of .com was a waste. And now we have domain hoarders making millions.
    - fanf2 7y ago
      > the reality in a lot of cases was few customers and no route out. I am keeping an eye on decommissioned TLDs - https://twitter.com/fanf/status/1245512707459158020?s=21 https://twitter.com/fanf/status/1245512707459158020?s=21 Most of them are closed .brand TLDs owned by companies whose business isn’t DNS. The struggling open TLDs seem to be traded and collected by big registries that can get economies of scale, rather than closed, so there is a limited way out. I have seen at least one .brand TLD (.bond for Bond University) converted to an open TLD and sold to a big gTLD registry provider.
burajin 7y ago
That'd be a nightmare if .io got taken away. Handshake.org works to solve ICANN's TLD issue (they control the entire namespace) and charge like $185,000-250k for a gTLD Nobody really uses opennic and it has the same issues as ICANN "a single party controls the namespace" with naming on Handshake it's verified, with no trust going to a single authority. Handshake is a decentralized root zone file, how it should be. Check out Handshake.org (uses a coin to prevent sybil attacks) Namebase.io to bid on TLDS Nextdns.io (enable handshake) in the options Some good guides and a video here: https://dns.live/start.html https://dns.live/start.html Works on top of regular DNS and supports top 100k alexa domains to prevent abuse/theft I just bought a few TLDs DNS Live offers free hosting etc (ns/web) if you get a tld off of Namebase.io Sorry if I seem a little biased. A cool thing to play with though. The internet naming system should be way better especially with whatever this corrupt .org sale is to some illuminati Ethos Capital, ICANN selling .org to themselves? lol California just halted the .org sale in the spirit of an open and free internet. ICANN has too much power, and would have made over a billion on the .org sale.
- DeathArrow 7y ago
  >(uses a coin to prevent sybil attacks) Hurray. So it solves the actual issue of the people who makes fortunes from the DNS system not being the nice people behind that coin.
mirimir 7y ago
Indeed. Isn't this just an other example of how dangerous it is to base your business on third party resources?
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
DeathArrow 7y ago
>Instead of having 1500+ discretely decided upon TLDs why not just let people just create their own TLDs as long as they have a server to host the DNS How would that fix anything? The problem is the actual hierarchical DNS system, not who gets to own a tld.

mjayhn 7y ago

Because the lucky few on top of the tld chain are still making fortunes. Ironically I see the internet going back to keywords/search terms in the future (aol keywords). I hope the tld hegemony is eventually a distant memory.

edoceo 7y ago

Then https://www.opennic.org https://www.opennic.org is for you! Welcome friend!

bluedevil2k 7y ago
The .fur domain is ... interesting
- echelon 7y ago
  That exists? It's probably all furries, then. Exit: I totally missed the GP post. OpenNic allows any TLD to be created.
str34ml1n3 7y ago
That's really cool, but none of the listed projects seem to work (e.g. grep.geek, post.uu, be.libre, opennic.chan...). Am I missing something? Do I have to do something special to access these domains?
- edoceo 7y ago
  Yes, use an OpenNiC NS too.
voldacar 7y ago
I have no clue how I've never heard of this - this is really cool and there should be more stuff like it. We should not be in a world where 70s era bureaucratic committees liks iana and icann get to define the internet

searchableguy 7y ago

.rich seems like a great idea to earn shit ton of money.

echelon 7y ago
https://icannwiki.org/.rich https://icannwiki.org/.rich There are only 99 registered domains, a few of which are probably owned by the registry itself. At $2,500/yr/domain, they're not exactly making bank. The cost to maintain all of this probably eats into the profit a bit.
- tialaramex 7y ago
  I'd be surprised if it even pays for itself. Running a gTLD is not intended to be cheap. $1M pa is the ballpark I've seen quoted. Lots of people had the idea that they'd get a million customers and so even at one dollar per customer they couldn't help but make money, the reality in a lot of cases was few customers and no route out. A handful of general purpose gTLDs work, there's one quite popular in Russia for example, using Cyrillic characters instead of Latin, they have a broad base of paying customers. Most of the rest are pure vanity and can be expected to have similar lifespan to a vanity .com domain. Some will be sold to speculators, some will be expensively dormant for years, many will be abandoned and forgotten. Mostly gTLDs were/ are a way for ICANN to make a lot of money exploring stupid people's greed.
  - DeathArrow 7y ago
    >Mostly gTLDs were/ are a way for ICANN to make a lot of money exploring stupid people's greed. In the '90s people told that buying lots of .com was a waste. And now we have domain hoarders making millions.
  - fanf2 7y ago
    > the reality in a lot of cases was few customers and no route out. I am keeping an eye on decommissioned TLDs - https://twitter.com/fanf/status/1245512707459158020?s=21 https://twitter.com/fanf/status/1245512707459158020?s=21 Most of them are closed .brand TLDs owned by companies whose business isn’t DNS. The struggling open TLDs seem to be traded and collected by big registries that can get economies of scale, rather than closed, so there is a limited way out. I have seen at least one .brand TLD (.bond for Bond University) converted to an open TLD and sold to a big gTLD registry provider.

burajin 7y ago

That'd be a nightmare if .io got taken away. Handshake.org works to solve ICANN's TLD issue (they control the entire namespace) and charge like $185,000-250k for a gTLD Nobody really uses opennic and it has the same issues as ICANN "a single party controls the namespace" with naming on Handshake it's verified, with no trust going to a single authority. Handshake is a decentralized root zone file, how it should be. Check out Handshake.org (uses a coin to prevent sybil attacks) Namebase.io to bid on TLDS Nextdns.io (enable handshake) in the options Some good guides and a video here: https://dns.live/start.html https://dns.live/start.html Works on top of regular DNS and supports top 100k alexa domains to prevent abuse/theft I just bought a few TLDs DNS Live offers free hosting etc (ns/web) if you get a tld off of Namebase.io Sorry if I seem a little biased. A cool thing to play with though. The internet naming system should be way better especially with whatever this corrupt .org sale is to some illuminati Ethos Capital, ICANN selling .org to themselves? lol California just halted the .org sale in the spirit of an open and free internet. ICANN has too much power, and would have made over a billion on the .org sale.

DeathArrow 7y ago
>(uses a coin to prevent sybil attacks) Hurray. So it solves the actual issue of the people who makes fortunes from the DNS system not being the nice people behind that coin.

mirimir 7y ago

Indeed. Isn't this just an other example of how dangerous it is to base your business on third party resources?

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

DeathArrow 7y ago

>Instead of having 1500+ discretely decided upon TLDs why not just let people just create their own TLDs as long as they have a server to host the DNS How would that fix anything? The problem is the actual hierarchical DNS system, not who gets to own a tld.