Creating our own top-level domain

Doug Barton DougB at DougBarton.net
Wed Dec 12 18:28:59 UTC 2001


On 10 Dec 2001, Arnout Engelen wrote:

> We (some CS students) had a cool idea this evening: we could start our
> own top-level domain. Of course, it would only work for people who
> included the nameserver we're going to set up as 'secondary
> nameserver' or so, but it'd be neat to have.

	Sounds like an excellent way to learn more about how DNS works.

> my question is: is this even possible (it seems to us...)?

	Of course it's possible. :) The existing root/TLD name server
relationships exist purely as a matter of agreement between most sites on
the internet. Your TLD will be the same, just for a smaller subset of
people.

> Will BIND be a good choice?

	Given that most of the root and TLD name servers are currently
running BIND, I certainly hope that the answer to that question is yes. :)

> What are the problems we're going to run into?

	Now if we told you that up front, what would you learn?

> What are the most important pieces of documentation we should read,
> apart from the obvious HOWTO's?

	Cricket's "DNS and BIND, 4th edition" has an excellent
description of the root/TLD delegation system, I'd say that's a crucial
first step. I'd also check http://www.icann.org/ for info on the existing,
commonly accepted TLD's; http://new.net/ for some new, not quite so well
accepted ones; and http://orsc.net/ for yet another view of what the
root/TLD relationships ought to look like. When you guys have your stuff
running smoothly, you can petition the orsc to have your TLD included in
their delegation, which would allow a lot more people than just your group
to see it (although still only a small percentage of the internet).

	Let us know how this turns out. :)

Doug
-- 
    "We will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail."
	- George W. Bush, President of the United States
          September 20, 2001

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