Re: Shared TLD's? Dead Idea. (Re: newdom BOF)

[pb@fasterix.freenix.fr (Pierre Beyssac)]

According to David Collier-Brown:
[ implementation of shared registries ]
> 	4) I can think of at least three families of solution,
> one of which I implemented out of interest, one which uses
> proprietary DBMSs,and one which requires only a non-shared registry
> program conected to an authenticating web server and made available
> to other organizations, and 
> 	5) I'm working on the latter at a very low priority.

This is exactly what EU.org runs on: Apache, FreeBSD for the basic
stuff plus a few Perl scripts calling "dig" to check nameservers.
HTTP authentication for request processing by the administrators. The
whois database uses the publicly available and very good RIPE
database (Perl) scripts. Not a single byte of commercial software
runs on that machine.

Enough said for technical details; the bottom line is that I plan
to release my code as freeware, if anyone is interested, as a
demonstration that running a NIC is technically a solved problem,
and as a way to promote the establishing of small NICs.

This allows shared administration, if not quite shared registry.

The next step, as you point out, would be to implement a distributed
database for real shared registries.

>   And shared/exclusive is a false dichotomy: a closely-held domain
> may well want to franchise access for a price to a whole community
> of ISPs.

Quite right. That would meet the "minimal cost" criterion quite well
since the registry would essentially be reduced to a few computers
and a competent administrator or two.
-- 
Pierre Beyssac      pb@fasterix.frmug.fr.net pb@fasterix.freenix.fr
{Free,Net,Open}BSD, Linux : il y a moins bien, mais c'est plus cher
    Free domains: http://www.eu.org/ or mail dns-manager@EU.org