[ncdnhc-discuss] Re: Why is "Marketing ccTLDs as generics" on NC Agenda?

[Jonathan Weinberg]

At 12:26 PM 10/4/2001 -0700, Vany Martinez wrote:
>Jonathan:
>I have never asked to talk about Alternate Roots.
>Again this was another confusion from who draft the
>agenda.
>Let call with proper names the things:
>1.  An Alternate Root involves a server independent
>from the actual roots that is resolving TLDs (.TRAVEL,
>.GAME, .KIDS, etc, for example) different than the
>ones created by ICANN, without using any technology of
>masquerading an existent domain name within the actual
>existent TLDs (.COM, .ORG, etc...).
>2. The subject I am addressing is not Alternate Roots.
>The subject I am addresing is the launching of
>services as New.net and other Companies that uses and
>masquerades actual domain names inside TLDs as .ORG,
>COM, etc...in order to provide domain names inside
>TLDs as .TRAVEL, .GAME, .KIDS, etc... If New.net want
>to call themselves an Alternate Root, then is a bad
>definition because they are functioning under the
>actual Roots, maquerading existent domain names as we
>know them to provide new TLDs, etc...And, such TLDs
>are not resolved by everybody...only those who has the
>software they download or the ISP has upgraded their
>networks by adding some lines to their DNS
>configuration, are the ones that are able to resolve
>such domain names.
[snip]

         Actually, I think this misdescribes new.net.  Yes, they offer 
users a plugin that maps aaa.bbb to aaa.bbb.new.net.  But it doesn't appear 
that the ISPs who partner with them are using that technique; rather, 
they're simply pointing to a set of new.net alternate root servers.  See 
<http://www.new.net/help_isp_info.tp>, which indicates that an ISP can 
resolve new.net names by (among other things) replacing its root.cache file 
with one that points to the new.net root servers.  So they are using *both* 
of the two technologies you describe above.  And fwiw I think the questions 
you raise about them (relating, among other things, to the possibility of 
conflicts and the fact that the names do not universally resolve) apply no 
more strongly to them than to any other alternate root.

Jon