Could it be worth a campaign to have a Top Level Domain "open", or "free" (as in freedom) for these sorts of purposes? I guess it would need quite a lot of plumbing. David
David Hirst Mobile: +44 7831 405443 -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of William Waites Sent: 04 January 2012 16:44 To: [email protected]; [email protected] Cc: [email protected] Subject: Re: [okfn-discuss] Most "open" way of registering a domain/get a hosting? On Wed, 04 Jan 2012 14:13:04 +0000, <[email protected]> said: > hi i mormally lurk but re. hosting have found gandi.net not so > supportive so switched over 2 years ago to trick.ca, a > telekommunisten hosting service, but is prob. too small scale a > service for your needs? Since the original poster asked particularly about domain name registration, I'll expand a bit about the way trick.ca works. They have an account with Key Systems GmbH (http;//rrpproxy.net/). Key Systems is a registrar that offers unbundled access to the domain registration plumbing and their direct clients are resellers like the Telekommunisten. This unbundling of the infrastructure is something that I am not aware of other registrars doing and is the key idea where "open" is concerned, in my opinion. It means a level of access and control that is not otherwise possible without going and becoming a registrar yourself. The Telekommunisten are all about supporting cooperatives and community organisations and individuals and moving resources into the collective or "common good" domain so support "open" in this way (indeed generally take a stronger position on this topic than the OKF does, but that's a separate discussion). My domain names are lodged with them. Also for hosting of small uncomplicated web sites, their microhosting is pretty good. For more complicated things its a question of finding which commodity server farm suits your needs best. I would recommend Hetzner for real machines and ARP Networks for virtual machines. Hetzner is cheap and competent, ARP Networks is clueful and doesn't oversubscribe their underlying hardware nearly as badly as most of the others do and provides you with a level of access that you don't generally get with any of the other providers (don't want to run linux? prefer FreeBSD or OpenBSD? fine, it's your virtual machine, do what you like). For DNS I also use Hetzner's nameservers in a "hidden master" setup. If you're already a Hetzner customer this is something like EUR 2 / year and means you have proper control over your domains. But doing it this way also means you don't have a web interface. If you want a web interface or HTTP API, I'd also suggest Key Systems via the Telekommunisten. Hope this helps, -w _______________________________________________ okfn-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/okfn-discuss
