[NA-Discuss] The TLD-less NYC

[Eric Brunner-Williams]

> The DNS was not designed for that.

Well, there's not a lot of difference between DNS as a residential 
application for a residence area of a territorial jurisdiction with, 
and without, an iso3166 code point.

> Just last night I spoke to
> a top bureaucrat at the city's IT agency who indicated that they are
> looking to Verisign, NuStar, and other prospective contractors for
> policy guidance. "Here's how you sell more names, faster, and cheaper.
> Sign here."

Writing CORE's .nyc application was a learning experience, if not for 
DOITT, then for myself, and for CORE.

> There's huge pressure to sell names willy-nilly, both city budget
> shortfalls and 90% of the industry panting for new TLDs and pointing to
> historic faults as evidence that a thoughtfully developed .nyc TLD is
> impossible. We don't believe so and it would be good to have the strong
> support of NARLO and ALAC and NCUC and other entities inclined toward
> the public interest in matters Internet to add support to our effort.

As this list discussion illustrates, the desire for support from 
outside of New York may be difficult to fulfill. A similar lack of 
external interest in a standing problem was brought to my attention in 
the Summer and early Fall of 2001. I suggested that local utility in 
the form of solving the standing problem was more important than the 
absence of external interest, and in November 2001 the standing 
problem was locally solved.

The standing problem was the absence of Han Script labels in the IANA 
root. The solution was to enter into service a constellation of 
servers serving the IANA root extended with the presence of Han Script 
labels. Initially zero internet users were benefited, as is common in 
the introduction of new infrastructure. Today in excess of 400 million 
internet users are daily beneficiaries, and after a decade of 
demonstration, the IANA root now contains an initial set of Han Script 
labels.

Eric