On Sat, 14 Jun 2003, Dassa wrote:

> enterprise itself is just as valid as any other.  For instance the
> impact of a hosting provider or ISP going out of business or providing
> shabby service would have even more impact than DNS being down.

? Nobody uses IP addresses to advertise their services. If your DNS is 
down, *everything* stops working properly. 

> Alternative DNS and domains/hostnames can be quickly set up but if you
> loose your data and/or connection, then things become very serious and a
> site may not be restored quickly.  There are a number of third level

The point behind a domain name is that it's easier for people to use than
numbers.

One of the points behind registering your own domain name (rather than use 
foo.isp.net.au (waves :) :) is that this is supposed to give you some security. 

That is, if isp.net.au goes out of business or stops offering the service 
that you want, (waves again :) :) you can move your domain name to a new 
hosting provider with very little or no interruption to service. No customer 
retraining, no altered advertising, no oddities.

If the owner of the domain to which you have attached yourself goes out of
business it will be *very hard* to maintain your subdomain. e.g. if 
'web.id.au' closes down, owners of 'foo.web.id.au' will not be able to 
continue using foo; thus defeating one of the good reasons for having your
own domain name. It's also very expensive (if any significant amount has 
been invested in the promotion of the now-defunct name). 

> domain/hostname registries, I run one myself, they often provide a
> better service than the second level registries.  I admit, there is
> always the chance a registry will not be professionally run but then,
> that applies to the second level registries also, look at how many TLD's
> have lame systems.

I think that privately-run registries have their place. They offer in
general the opportunity to have 'your own' domain name for much lower cost
than registering in the TLDs. I don't think that they are given serious
consideration by enterprise, for a very good reason: the savings are
outweighed by the potential costs. 

Regards,

Saliya