Russ and all, I thought I would share your experiences regarding the .US as it relates to ISI's management of it, with some other lists as I have also experienced similar experiences with ISI and also the IANA and now ICANN as well... domainiac wrote: > I would like to respond to several issues revolving around the .us system > brought up on this list an the DC meeting a couple months ago. > > -This mailing list. I attended the meeting but I didn't get any sort > notification about this list. I happened to see it because I check the NTIA > site regularly but as far as I know there has been no notification of the > meeting participants (other than the federal register notice which, of > course, almost nobody reads). I posted a few notices in newsgroups. This > list is being maintained by NTIA at www.ntia.doc.gov. NTIA is a small group > within the Dept. of Commerce and they deal with telecommunications policy > issues such as spectrum management, Internet commerce and privacy, and the > domain name system. As far as I can tell they have no technical expertise > and are made up of lawyers and policy people. > > -My background with .us. I have registered a few .us domain > (alcatraz.san-francisco.ca.us, santa.north-pole.ak.us, > consumer.washington,dc.us, and times-square.new-york.ny.us). I have found > that trying to register .us domains to be very problematic. Some of the > domains are administered by ISI and others have been delegated to others who > have requested to be registrars for certain cities. Many of the domain > records (such as nameservers for delegated domains) are years out of date. > There is also no clear set of rules (note the notation at ISI's web site > that claims the web page postings supercede the RFC's!). > > The registration of .us is very haphazard. When registering via ISI you > immediately get a response. it says not to bother contacting them for at > least 4 weeks. I waited the 4 weeks then I had to make at least 5 calls > over the next 2 or 3 weeks just to get a domain registered. Total time was > almost 2 months. Any business who needed a domain would have given up long > before that and gone to .com. > > I also dealt with some of the delegated registrars. Some were free. > However, one registrar who was doing it for free took this as a license to > set his own rules. He refused to register some domains I requested, accused > me of "domain abuse," and said he would not administer the domain any more > if ISI actually enforced the rules. I contacted ISI and they won't respond > at all. The domains are still there, completely unused. Other delegated > registrars do not give any information about .us registration at their web > site. One sent me a bill only after I completed a registration (which I > thought was free). > > -commercial use. I think the people complaining about commercial use of the > .us domains (or sending commercial messages to this list) are misguided. If > there is not a commercial use of the .us it will never amount to much. The > fact is that operating a domain system costs time and money and none of the > complainers seem to be willing to put up their funds. I would much rather > pay a small fee than deal with some delegated volunteer hostmaster who has a > distorted view of the world. Those that think there are all these > volunteers willing to do the work, supply the equipment, and coordinate > their efforts are dreaming. > > I would not object for preserving parts of the .US for non-commercial use > (even subsidized). However, once you get into these classifications it > costs time and money to administer such a plan and verify who is commercial, > etc. Also, this distinction is often impossible to make. The whole idea is > to generate commercial use of the space, not stop it. I would like to see > more ideas on commercial use (and yes, that includes a business plan to pay > the bills and plan for scalability if it should grow). Calling the > registrars who are charging a reasonable fee "greedy" is also not valid. > You get what you pay for. > > -New proposals. The thing that strikes me the most about the proposals > about the site is that most want to somehow link the plan to something Jon > Postel said or did. The fact is that most people do not know or care what > Jon Postel said or did. The idea is to develop a workable system, not have > a memorial for Jon Postel. Maybe Dr. Postel did and said many good things > but that was another time and place. However, he had a major hand in > setting up the ICANN disaster. the ISI reps. at the Washington meeting > actually announce themselves by saying how many years they worked with > Postel. It is time to move on. > > -leaving the system with ISI. for the reasons stated above and based on the > presentation they gave at the DC meeting I would support moving the system > completely away from ISI. their discussions at the meeting was about > stopping people from "grabbing" names and other forms of what they call > "abuse." The whole idea is to get people to use the domains, not prevent > people from using the system. ISI also indicated their budget was only $10K > (I assume this doesn't cover salaries) which is not anywhere near adequate. > Of course who would fund something almost nobody wants to use. A > coordinated, funded system is needed that is promoted and used. right now > there is not even a coordinated WHOIS for the 3rd level domains being > registered. > > -Multiple uses: Nothing prevents multiple uses of the .us system. For > instance, the Postal Service could run the xxx.city.state.us portion while > others could still manage xxx.us and/or xxx.state.us. There is no technical > limitation whatsoever to run these parallel system. As for the post office > wanting the system all I have to say is that at least somebody wants it. > The Postal service probably should bid in a competitive procurement since > they are competing with other commercial entities but I expect there would > not be any other qualified bidders if this was procured competitively. > > -Big companies using xxxx.us. At the DC meeting some tried to push getting > big businesses to use .us. one example was a hotel chain that could use > hotelname.washington.dc.us, etc. I think this is barking up the wrong tree. > The big companies, for the most part, already have the .com name which can > be divided into city.state.name.com if they want. the fact is they would > rather have people go to xxxx.com and then click to find the specific city. > Why would they waste time and effort registering all different domains in > different cities? It is the small business that would find uses, not large > corporations. Bank of America already has Alcatraz.com so when I went to > set up my Alcatraz site I was able to get alcatraz.san-francisco.ca.us. > This is much too long to type but it works well with the search engines. I > think promoting this domain space should be focused on small, local > businesses and personal/family use. > > -elimination of .com, .net, and .org in favor of .us - Why waste time > discussing this since it will never happen? > > Russ smith > http://consumer.net > http://domainia.org Regards, -- Jeffrey A. Williams CEO/DIR. Internet Network Eng/SR. Java/CORBA Development Eng. Information Network Eng. Group. INEG. INC. E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] Contact Number: 972-447-1894 Address: 5 East Kirkwood Blvd. Grapevine Texas 75208