David and all,

David Keegel wrote:

> ] David Keegel wrote:
> ]
> ] > I think there are three (orthogonal?) properties
>
> Lenu Mayo wrote:
>
> ] Here's my version of the same thing:
> ]
> ] 1. Chain of authority back to IANA
> ]
> ] The chain of authority comes with an obligation that says that
>
> Let me try to explain better.
>
> The chain of authority means you can trace back the delegations of
> any domain on the real DNS through its parent and eventually you will
> come to a domain delegated by the IANA from the real root of the DNS.

  I am not sure what you mean by this statement.  None the less, that IANA
Does not control the gTLD's that are on the A-M Root servers.  That is
done and managed by NSI currently.  The IANA recommends to NSI
what gTLD's and other types of TLD's should be entered onto the 13 legacy
Root servers.

>
>
> For example www.cyber.com.au has a chain of authority back to IANA,
> through Cybersource, then whoever is the authority for com.au, then
> Robert Elz who was delegated authority for au by the IANA.
> Cybersource has no obligations about adding entries for unrelated
> entities to the cyber.com.au name space.

  WWW.CYBER.COM.AU does not resolve from the Internic/NSI.  And
COM.AU is not a Legacy Root known zone.  SO you statement here is essentially
False.  If you doubt this, than go to rs.internic.net and do a whois on either
CYBER.COM.AU or .COM.AU  And you get a return result of "Not Found".
So these zones are only known to NAME SERVERS in the Australian area
and possibly some in the us that recognize .COM.AU as a zone on their
Name servers.

> In essense, my property 1 means you are visible in the real DNS.
>
> ] 2.  Delegation of the domain for the purpose of taking registrations
> ]     of sub-domains from unrelated entities
> ] 3.  Registrations and delegations of sub-domains are portable.
> ]
> ] Right now, the obligations are probably moral, but eventually they'll
> ] probably be contractual.
>
> The reason why the intention of the parent (of the domain in which
> you could register a sub-domain) in property 2 is important, is that
> if the owner of the domain taking registrations (eg: INA, NetRegistry,
> Internode, OzEmail) acts in an unfair way, the parent legitimately can
> (and perhaps should) revoke delegation of the domain.
>
> For example, if Melbourne IT decided to treat com.au applicants on a
> discriminatory basis, Robert Elz could take away their authority to
> delegate com.au names.  If NetRegistry decided to discriminate among
> au.com applicants and say reject applications from their competitors,
> Network Solutions and the IANA most likely couldn't care less.
>
> I suspect those two examples (com.au and au.com) are very unlikely,
> but some people like to have confidence that there is some sort of
> oversight in the unlikely event that a registry goes rogue.

  The term "Rogue" is a bit extreme in this context.  But that is of little
matter
here.  .AU.COM is a known zone back to the Legacy Root servers.  And
.COM.AU is not.  And that is a significant point.

> __________________________________________________________________________
>  David Keegel <djk&#167;cyber.com.au>  URL: http://www.cyber.com.au/users/djk/
> Cybersource P/L: Unix Systems Administration and TCP/IP network management

 regards,

--
Jeffrey A. Williams
DIR. Internet Network Eng/SR. Java/CORBA Development Eng.
Information Network Eng. Group. INEG. INC.
E-Mail jwkckid1&#167;ix.netcom.com