new top level domains

[Albert Lunde]

At 9:52 AM -0500 6/11/97, Jul,Erik wrote:
>Perhaps new TLDs are needed to handle the crush of demand for IP addresses.
> New "number spaces" are needed.  That could be, but this solution seems to
>provoke more questions than it answers.

No.

New top level domains have nothing to do with the IP number shortage.

There are a couple of schemes for reducing the waste of IP addresses under
the current version of TCP/IP (which uses 32 bit IP addresses, commonly
represented in four-part dotted decimal form.)

The most important is "CIDR" (Classless Interdomain Routing) (??), which for
routing purposes, throws out the old idea of class A, B, and C addresses
and allows handing out blocks of IP addresses in more flexible-sized blocks.
(not limited to powers of 256)

The long term solution to the shortage of IP addresses is "IP The Next
Generation" a.k.a. IPv6, a revised version of the TCP/IP protocols, which I
think, uses 128 bit IP addresses.

See:

http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/ipngwg-charter.html

for the gory details on IPNG.

This all has no visible effect on DNS naming (though there are low-level
issues).

The  top level domains are intended to ease the crowding in .com and
accomidate the desire for some third-party name registries besides the
Internic (though maybe not to the satisfaction of all concerned).

DNS was really designed to be heirachical, but it's getting used as a
nearly flat name space for www.something.com names.

You can find back issues of boardwatch magazine on line on the web at
www.boardwatch.com, which talks about issues like this in a more readable
form.



---
    Albert Lunde                      Albert-Lunde at nwu.edu