[thelist] Is there ONLY VeriSign???

Jason Bauer jbauer at chimesnet.com
Tue Oct 15 10:50:01 CDT 2002


> I know there are millions of places I can go to buy domain names but how
is
> everything organized. Who are the overall people in charge - if there is
> such a person/company.

> For example: If I were to start my own domain name purchasing sit (which
I'm
> not planning on doing) How would I get started?

Since nobody else seems to be reading your question, I'll take a stab at an
answer, and then someone who knows what they are talking about can correct
me. At least this way you'll get some kind of an answer to your actual
question (which is how are the registrars organized, not "what is a good
registrar")

Up until a couple of years ago, it was basically just VeriSign. Then, they
opened up the registration process so anybody and their mother could set up
a registrar. This resulted in much lower prices for us, and an explosion in
the number of companies that you could register your domain with.

Now, for an answer to your question of "Does it still all come back to
VeriSign?": I'm going to say yes and no... Yes because I think they still
run the database of available domains and the DNS servers of the top-level
domains. There has to be a central repository so you don't get duplicate
domains, and I imagine that VeriSign has something to do with it.

On the other hand, I don't think they have any hand in the actual
registration process... If they did, then we wouldn't be able to get a
domain for $6 a year or whatever the price has dropped to now. So, as part
of the opening of the registration process, VeriSign was forced to let other
people register domains on its database, without making money from them.

DISCLAIMER: This is just an educated guess as to how this all works, I have
no facts to back this up. Please correct me.

---
Jason Bauer
jbauer at chimesnet.com
Programmer/Analyst
Chimes, Inc.




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