Interesting People mailing list archives
more on Ending ICANN, U.N. overreaching through technical means: a proposal
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Sat, 16 Jul 2005 18:49:39 -0400
Begin forwarded message: From: Joe Touch <touch () ISI EDU> Date: July 16, 2005 3:42:42 PM EDT To: dave () farber netSubject: Re: [IP] Ending ICANN, U.N. overreaching through technical means: a proposal
Dave, Comments below: David Farber wrote:
Begin forwarded message: From: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com> Date: July 14, 2005 12:39:32 AM EDT To: politech () politechbot com Subject: [Politech] Ending ICANN, U.N. overreaching through technical means: a proposal Previous Politech message: http://www.politechbot.com/2005/07/13/will-the-un/ --- POST ANONYMOUSLY ICANN's most useful contributions are the assignment of IP addresses, DNS domains, and other numbers as specified by the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) in its RFCs. When Jon Postel ran it from his office, everything was fine. Now ICANN is an unregulated bureaucracy focusing on increasing its status and revenues by approving more expensive top level domains and charging more for existing domains. Because they share so many goals, a hostile takeover of ICANN by the U.N. is a perfect move, and sure to doom all of us to even worsegovernance. (I won't bother to go through the complete failure of ICANNto stick with its promised democratic reforms, or its inability to respect its own elected officials). The IETF can put a stop to much of this through technical means. For example, develop an alternate domain resolution algorithm (much like Google's "I'm feeling lucky"), so that when you type in Mary, the browser may go to Mary Kay, the Catholic Church, or your friend Mary's home page, or when you copy links from your browser to your e-mail program to send to your friends, the domain name is displayed howeverthe webmaster may want. Once domain names become invisible bits like IPaddresses, then there will be no point in fighting about them.
There have been numerous attempts at this - e.g., new.net For every new root, large organizations will just purchase names in all such roots. Users, who can't assume that's been done, must search all such roots to find what they want. It's a lose-lose proposition. Domain strings are meant to be recalled by humans, but not guessed by humans. The DNS is not a search engine. We have those, and they work fine.
Also, the IETF should end concerns about IP shortages by working to expand NAT implementations and the use of IPv6, with its effectivelyinfinite number of IP addresses, into the real world (perhaps IPv4 withNAT at the client end where needed with a mostly IPv6 Internet core). Finally, the IETF should stop giving IANA and ICANN new duties in its RFCs. Where unique numbers must be assigned (e.g. well known TCP andUDP ports), technical means should be used to assign those numbers (e.g.a simple web based registration form), rather than going through IANA and ICANN. -- Anonymous
Technical solutions are great - when they work. NATs don't - or at least not the way many think; by making the NAT'd network look like a single host, some protocols (e.g., VoIP, web servers, etc.) don't work or require extraordinary efforts to compensate. And a web page to hand out a limited resource is a fine way to deplete it quickly, nothing more. The issue with assigned numbers is exactly the need to avoid competition for preferred numbers (e.g., for ports, 400-405, 411, etc.) and preserve the limited resource (1024 system ports and 48K of user ports). A web page is not a technical solution; such a solution might be a protocol for dynamically finding the port for a protocol, ala the RPC portmapper, but we're a long way from a global portmapper. Joe ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as lists-ip () insecure org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
Current thread:
- more on Ending ICANN, U.N. overreaching through technical means: a proposal David Farber (Jul 16)