Re: [ga] Critics say VeriSign still has...

[Sandy Harris <sandy@storm.ca>]

Patrick Greenwell wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 10 Apr 2001 gavin.stokes@autodesk.com wrote:
> 
> > How about shortage?  How about inflation?
> 
> The shortage is completely artificial. The inflation is due largely to the
> artificial scarcity.

Technically there is almost no difference between creating a domain at one
level vs. at another. It doesn't matter much whether you're creating

	a new top level domain, .xyz
	a second level domain, xyz.com
or 	third level, xyz.example.com.

In all cases you have to:

1)	either set up one or more nameservers for the new domain
	or add the domain's info to some existing nameservers

2)	add a pointer record on the nameserver for the parent domain
	  that says where to find records for the child domain

That's it.

Part 1 may be considerable work, depending on how the domain is to be organised,
but it is done by the domain holder or his ISP.

Part 2 is basically pretty simple. Any competent DNS administrator can do it,
for a third or fourth level domain within his organisation, in a few of minutes.

However, if you need it done reliably and consistently for large numbers of
domains, with the information replicated to multiple servers, then it is a 
fairly complex job. Also, if it is near the top of the hierarchy, then having
it work reliably becomes important.

Basically, the registries and registrars exist to deal with the issues in the
previous paragraph.

The only technical difference between creating xyz.com and creating a new TLD
.xyz are:

	where you put the pointer to it, in records for .com or in the root
	whether people can find it directly from the root or root->.com->.xyz.com

So there is no technical reason we cannot create new TLDs as fast as we are
currently creating .com domains.

Nor is there any technical reason for a price difference between a TLD (for
which it costs $50,000 just to apply) and a second level domain you can
register for $20 or so. The work involved is nearly identical.

Arguably there are economic, political, historical, business, ... reasons not
to create new TLDs wholesale, but there's certainly no technical obstacle.
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