My only reason for ranting is that if I wanted to buy a Mac, I would right now be spending more then $11,386.99… not only that, but I still would not have all the hardware that I want in my new machine. I mean, come on guys. I can build something my self in three hours for $3,300 that is faster, has almost twice the amount of storage (and more redundancy). Infact, the only thing the Mac can offer me on their online configuration that I really want, is my 8GB of RAM…

Seriously? You have to be kidding.

I must however admit, the iPhone was a good invention though, Steve.

I love OS X. I do. Seriously. But until everyone stops calling their Mac not a PC… I will still be laughing at all people who own a Mac. A cheap Mac will set you back about $1,000. A cheap (new) PC will set you back $400. Must be another win from Apple. *sigh*

History Lesson time!

Richard M. Stallman is a hacker and software freedom activist. He wished to create a free operating system called GNU (which is a recursive acronym for GNU’s Not Unix). Stallman announced the plan for the GNU operating system in September 1983. Stallman was responsible for contributing many necessary tools, including a text editor, compiler, debugger, and a build automator. Many of these tools, such as gcc (the GNU C Compiler) are used today in (nearly) every Linux machine.

Back to my rant.

The Free Software Foundation now wishes us, the people who use Linux not to call Linux … Linux. I am sorry. The opperating system that I use is called Linux. This is the kernel that I use, hence, the system that I use is called Linux. When people ask what I have installed on my computer, I tell them either “Linux” or “Kubuntu”.

I think that we should not start appending or prepending anything to what my kernel is called.

For goodness sakes, if the Free Software Foundation wants me to start calling Linux GNU/Linux or GNU+Linux, I should start adding all the important software that I use on my machine.

Here was my attempt. Sorry to the people/companies and product/program names that I have missed.

GNU+OpenBSD+RedHat+Novell+ApacheFoundation
+MozillaFoundation+KDEFoundation
+kVirc+CrossOverOffice+wine/Linux+xen+openvz

Stupid!

dig au NS @4.2.2.2 | grep ^au. | wc -l

The command above returns “8“, which means that the Australian top level domain has eight name servers that might be queried when you type in any website who’s domain name ends in .au

dig com NS @4.2.2.2 | grep ^com. | wc -l

This command (notice how we are looking at the .com tld this time) returns “13“, which means that when you enter a domain name ending in .com, you could ask one of a possible 13 domain name servers around the planet for information about a domain in the .com TLD.

Interesting Internet Factoid!
47 out of the 264 active top level domains on the internet have either two or three nameservers set as being authoritative (that is, they are allowed to respond to requests for that top level domain, that they are seen as a master). That’s a nice 18% of all top level domains. (This information was correct 29th July 2008 … 1am).

To run a top level domain, we will assume that we need three machines! If you want to get in with the new TLD craze, where ICANN have opened up registration of TLD’s, you will need at least three servers to act as namerservers. This is a very safe bet.

How much does three servers cost? Well, before your start Googling for webhosts – wait. You will need either a dedicated machine or a VPS.

In my experience, a simple machine can very easily handle a load of 1,000 DNS queries a second, so, logically thinking, if you have three machines, your new top level domain would be able to handle around 2,500 queries a second!

A quick Google for dedicated hosts showed that to get three servers in three continents will cost me around $150 per server (in AUD) a month, which means, before you have even let one internet user access a website, you have paid $450. This is not counting the registration free for a new TLD that ICANN will probably ask you to pay them (early estimates are that a top level domain that is in the ICANN root will cost about $10,000 … I am guessing for $25,000 and $100,000 or more for “premium” top level domains like .blog).

The raw cost!

Now, think about that for a second. This means that for three years of operation at a minimum you would be looking at 10000+(450*12*3)+(40000*3) or $146,200.

That is, $10,000 for the registration free to get your new Top Level Domain into the ICANN’s roots, $450 a month for three years to pay for three name servers (you will need more as the top level domain gets more popular, as I said above, dot com has around thirteen servers. The price also pays for food and coffee for three administrators ($40,000)

Sounds like a lot, but if the registrar owner makes $4 on each domain, then only 36,550 domains need to be sold to customers.

Running a top level domain that is in the ICANN/IANA root is relatively easy. The biggest stumbling block will be the amount of money that is required.

In my next post, I will look at the software end. What software is required in order for customers to register domains? What is needed for you to serve clients with responses to a top level domain, and of course, it would not be me without explaining how you can put your top level domain live on the internet without paying a free to ICANN or IANA!