WEBVTT - Verisign and the .com Top Level Domain 0:00:04.440 --> 0:00:12.319 Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there, 0:00:12.360 --> 0:00:15.920 and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. 0:00:15.920 --> 0:00:19.599 I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the 0:00:19.720 --> 0:00:24.079 tech are you. Recently here in the United States, Senator 0:00:24.160 --> 0:00:28.560 Elizabeth Warren and Congressman Jerry Nadler have called for an 0:00:28.560 --> 0:00:33.239 investigation into a company called VeriSign. So why did they 0:00:33.320 --> 0:00:36.239 do that? Well, they say that VeriSign has engaged in 0:00:36.640 --> 0:00:42.760 predatory pricing their words. And what is VeriSign's business, Well, 0:00:42.840 --> 0:00:46.440 among other things, vera sign is the one and only 0:00:46.760 --> 0:00:52.760 entity acting as a registry for some top level domain names, 0:00:53.000 --> 0:00:55.200 and we're going to break all that down so that 0:00:55.280 --> 0:00:58.240 it's easier to parse. But let me preface this by 0:00:58.280 --> 0:01:03.840 saying this is complicated stuff, not just technically, but from 0:01:03.920 --> 0:01:09.800 like an organizational perspective. This is really complex and there's 0:01:09.840 --> 0:01:13.480 gonna be a lot of talk about the responsibilities of 0:01:14.000 --> 0:01:18.280 a registry in this episode and how things have kind 0:01:18.319 --> 0:01:24.000 of shifted around since the days of arpenet into the Internet. 0:01:24.319 --> 0:01:26.880 So what I'm saying is that there's a lot more 0:01:26.920 --> 0:01:29.160 to this than what I'm going to cover. In fact, 0:01:29.200 --> 0:01:31.160 I'm not even going to get into things like the 0:01:31.280 --> 0:01:35.560 DNS wars or the Root Registry wars, or any of 0:01:35.560 --> 0:01:39.040 that stuff, because it would require a full series of 0:01:39.040 --> 0:01:42.840 episodes all by themselves. So if what I'm talking about 0:01:42.880 --> 0:01:45.880 today is interesting to you and you want to learn more, 0:01:46.120 --> 0:01:49.400 let me tell you there is a wealth of information online. 0:01:49.440 --> 0:01:52.360 You can just do some searching around for things like 0:01:52.720 --> 0:01:56.440 DNS wars, for example, and learn all about how people 0:01:56.480 --> 0:02:00.720 were trying to establish standards in price. This is, you know, 0:02:00.800 --> 0:02:04.560 before you actually arrive at standards and practices, it can 0:02:04.600 --> 0:02:07.640 be a little bit like the wild West out there, 0:02:07.720 --> 0:02:12.160 and that was certainly the case with early organization of 0:02:12.240 --> 0:02:17.800 information on the Internet infrastructure. But let's talk about devices 0:02:18.040 --> 0:02:21.840 and names now. The naming of computers is a difficult matter. 0:02:21.960 --> 0:02:24.320 It isn't just one of your holiday games. You may 0:02:24.360 --> 0:02:26.160 think at first, I'm as mad as a hatter when 0:02:26.160 --> 0:02:28.600 I tell you a computer as a name that's really 0:02:28.639 --> 0:02:30.200 a bunch of numbers. You know. I was really going 0:02:30.240 --> 0:02:33.119 to try and channel ts Elliott through the whole episode, 0:02:33.440 --> 0:02:35.800 but it kind of fell off quickly there, So I 0:02:35.800 --> 0:02:38.640 guess there goes my chance of having this episode be 0:02:38.720 --> 0:02:41.720 turned into a musical by Androloid Weber. But yeah, in 0:02:41.800 --> 0:02:45.000 the early days of arpinnet, when a bunch of computer 0:02:45.080 --> 0:02:48.000 scientists were kind of sussing out how to create a 0:02:48.040 --> 0:02:51.000 system in which different computers would be able to communicate 0:02:51.040 --> 0:02:54.240 with one another and send and receive files and all 0:02:54.240 --> 0:02:58.760 that kind of stuff. One of the many challenges required 0:02:58.760 --> 0:03:03.280 that each computer have a unique name or address assigned 0:03:03.400 --> 0:03:06.760 to it. Otherwise you would have to rely on maybe 0:03:06.800 --> 0:03:10.079 a direct computer to computer connection to send information from 0:03:10.120 --> 0:03:12.959 computer A to computer B. And that works if you're 0:03:13.000 --> 0:03:15.359 just talking about two computers. Right, If you just need 0:03:15.400 --> 0:03:19.320 to directly connect two machines together, no big deal. I mean, 0:03:19.360 --> 0:03:22.200 it is a big deal. But you could do that. 0:03:22.440 --> 0:03:25.880 You could create a physical connection and create standards that 0:03:25.919 --> 0:03:28.600 would allow one computer to talk to another. Keep in mind, 0:03:28.960 --> 0:03:31.920 different computers communicate in very different ways, so you'd have 0:03:31.960 --> 0:03:35.840 to kind of build a translator in on either side 0:03:35.920 --> 0:03:39.160 so that the computers could understand the information being sent 0:03:39.240 --> 0:03:42.280 back and forth. But more than that, if you add 0:03:42.280 --> 0:03:44.520 more computers to this, so that you don't just have 0:03:44.560 --> 0:03:47.080 computer A and B, but you have C through Z 0:03:47.280 --> 0:03:49.720 and then all the numbers, well you get into a 0:03:49.720 --> 0:03:52.680 system that's far more complicated. Right. You can't just directly 0:03:52.720 --> 0:03:57.520 connect Computer A to all five thousand other machines that 0:03:57.520 --> 0:04:00.760 are on the network. That would be impossible. You would 0:04:00.840 --> 0:04:03.520 just have a massive cables that would be a real 0:04:03.600 --> 0:04:06.600 tripping hazard if nothing else, Plus where would you plug 0:04:06.600 --> 0:04:08.960 them all into. So sooner or later, you're going to 0:04:09.040 --> 0:04:11.920 have a huge mess on your hands that needs to 0:04:11.920 --> 0:04:15.880 be solved through some other means. And thus it makes 0:04:16.120 --> 0:04:19.680 more sense to create an infrastructure in which each computer 0:04:19.960 --> 0:04:23.600 has a unique name or address. So if Computer one 0:04:23.680 --> 0:04:26.800 wants to talk to Computer five hundred, will both computers 0:04:26.800 --> 0:04:30.080 have their own unique addresses, and that facilitates this connection 0:04:30.200 --> 0:04:33.040 between the two, so that Computer one is communicating only 0:04:33.080 --> 0:04:36.240 with Computer five hundred and not just blasting out information 0:04:36.600 --> 0:04:40.559 to four hundred ninety nine machines only one of which 0:04:40.960 --> 0:04:43.440 actually is relevant. You don't want it to be a 0:04:43.560 --> 0:04:47.920 party line. So those unique addresses would allow this to happen. 0:04:48.040 --> 0:04:51.200 And computers two through four hundred ninety nine plus anything 0:04:51.240 --> 0:04:54.200 above five hundred one or five oh one. And further, 0:04:54.720 --> 0:04:56.799 none of those are going to accidentally get the information 0:04:56.960 --> 0:05:00.000 meant to just go between these other two computers one 0:05:00.120 --> 0:05:02.400 in five hundred. So I'm not going to dwell too 0:05:02.480 --> 0:05:07.839 much on the old NCP days. NCP stands for Network 0:05:07.960 --> 0:05:11.919 Control Protocol. That is a topic that will require a 0:05:11.960 --> 0:05:15.839 deeper dive in itself in order to talk about network infrastructure. 0:05:16.240 --> 0:05:19.800 But it's a predecessor to what we have today. So instead, 0:05:20.000 --> 0:05:24.520 let's turn our attention to an approach that would succeed 0:05:24.920 --> 0:05:29.440 the old NCP rules, and that would be TCP IP. 0:05:29.920 --> 0:05:33.720 We usually write that as TCP slash IP. These are 0:05:33.720 --> 0:05:38.400 two sets of rules that are the Transmission Control Protocol 0:05:38.680 --> 0:05:42.159 and the Internet protocol. Remember, protocol is really just a 0:05:42.160 --> 0:05:45.840 fancy word to say rule set. This is the process, 0:05:46.080 --> 0:05:49.400 the rules that you follow in order to achieve whatever 0:05:49.440 --> 0:05:52.440 the thing is you're trying to achieve. Now, the transmission 0:05:52.440 --> 0:05:56.719 control protocol is incredibly important. This is where we get 0:05:56.760 --> 0:06:00.719 into stuff like packet switching with you know, headers and 0:06:00.920 --> 0:06:03.480 error checking and all that kind of stuff. The basic 0:06:03.839 --> 0:06:07.359 functionality that allows Internet traffic to work as it does. 0:06:07.480 --> 0:06:11.719 So instead of sending, say an enormous file all in 0:06:11.920 --> 0:06:15.120 one big chunk, you divide it up into packets, which 0:06:15.160 --> 0:06:19.440 makes it far easier to deliver to your destination even 0:06:19.560 --> 0:06:22.840 if a pathway shuts down. So, like let's say that 0:06:22.880 --> 0:06:27.320 you have a route planned where the information is going 0:06:27.360 --> 0:06:29.640 from computer one to computer five hundred, but then one 0:06:29.680 --> 0:06:32.200 of the computers along that route shuts off. Well, if 0:06:32.240 --> 0:06:35.760 you're sending one big file and it hasn't finished transferring yet, 0:06:35.800 --> 0:06:38.520 then you've got errors, you've got an incomplete file. You're 0:06:38.560 --> 0:06:40.560 gonna have to start all over again. If you divide 0:06:40.560 --> 0:06:42.919 that file into lots of teeny tiny little packets and 0:06:42.960 --> 0:06:45.520 you send all those packets across the network, and not 0:06:45.560 --> 0:06:47.599 all of them are taking the same path. They're all 0:06:47.600 --> 0:06:49.920 going to the same destination, but they're taking different ways 0:06:49.960 --> 0:06:53.320 to get there, then it's far more likely that all 0:06:53.320 --> 0:06:56.039 that information is going to arrive at its destination and 0:06:56.080 --> 0:07:01.640 get reassembled into whatever the original fileile was. That's the 0:07:01.680 --> 0:07:07.960 basics of how internet transfers work. But we're more interested 0:07:08.240 --> 0:07:11.880 in focusing on the other set of rules, the IP, 0:07:12.160 --> 0:07:15.480 the Internet protocol. These are the rules that involve attaching 0:07:15.640 --> 0:07:19.160 addresses to information so that the system can tell where 0:07:19.200 --> 0:07:22.760 the information is coming from and where it is going to. 0:07:23.600 --> 0:07:26.360 It's kind of like the physical postal address that you 0:07:26.400 --> 0:07:28.040 would put on a piece of mail so that the 0:07:28.080 --> 0:07:31.320 post service could accurately deliver your letter, or in the 0:07:31.320 --> 0:07:35.120 event that it's undeliverable could return the letter to you. 0:07:35.120 --> 0:07:37.200 You know, like, if it turns out the address your 0:07:37.240 --> 0:07:39.480 grandma gave you was fake and she's currently on the 0:07:39.560 --> 0:07:42.720 run from the authorities, I might be projecting a little here. 0:07:42.760 --> 0:07:46.720 Stay safe, Grandma. While the first part of tcp IP 0:07:47.000 --> 0:07:50.920 published way back in nineteen seventy four, the IP address 0:07:50.920 --> 0:07:54.080 stuff doesn't really come into play for another decade, mostly 0:07:54.120 --> 0:07:57.080 because it took years to establish a stable version of 0:07:57.120 --> 0:08:02.360 TCPIP that was reliable enough to reply the older NCP rules. 0:08:02.400 --> 0:08:06.000 These things aren't like an overnight switch. As it turns out, 0:08:06.480 --> 0:08:09.480 this included the creation of IP addresses, something that I'm 0:08:09.520 --> 0:08:12.440 sure you have heard about. The original set of rules 0:08:12.440 --> 0:08:16.720 for addresses came about with IPv four, and those involved 0:08:16.760 --> 0:08:20.280 a thirty two bit address. That means that the IPv 0:08:20.400 --> 0:08:25.600 four could represent nearly four point three billion different addresses, 0:08:25.640 --> 0:08:28.720 but I should add that lots of addresses were withheld 0:08:29.040 --> 0:08:33.160 for various reasons. Also, four point three billion wouldn't be 0:08:33.320 --> 0:08:36.040 enough addresses. It was clear that while it was more 0:08:36.040 --> 0:08:39.600 than sufficient for the arpinet days and the early Internet days, 0:08:39.840 --> 0:08:43.040 over time we would eventually run out of addresses to 0:08:43.120 --> 0:08:46.160 assign to devices, and we would need a different solution 0:08:46.720 --> 0:08:49.679 that ultimately would arrive with IPv six, but again, that's 0:08:49.679 --> 0:08:53.520 another topic for a different time. The IPv four address 0:08:53.520 --> 0:08:57.720 format consists of four numbers, and each number is separated 0:08:57.760 --> 0:09:00.920 from the others by a period. Each number could range 0:09:00.920 --> 0:09:04.480 between zero and two hundred and fifty five. Each set 0:09:04.480 --> 0:09:08.040 of numbers is an octet, which means it is made 0:09:08.120 --> 0:09:11.680 up of eight bits or a byte of information, so 0:09:11.720 --> 0:09:15.960 you get four bytes or thirty two bits total. Viola, 0:09:16.480 --> 0:09:19.800 I'm sorry, voila. Gotta just refer to that in my 0:09:19.960 --> 0:09:22.760 notes here. The address can also be thought of as 0:09:23.000 --> 0:09:27.240 two parts. One part represents the network prefix and the 0:09:27.280 --> 0:09:30.680 other part is the host number. So the network prefix 0:09:30.720 --> 0:09:33.080 would be the same for all devices connected to the 0:09:33.120 --> 0:09:36.800 Internet through that same network. The host numbers would be 0:09:36.880 --> 0:09:41.680 unique to the individual devices connected to that network. Also, 0:09:41.760 --> 0:09:44.160 if the device is only visible to the local network, 0:09:44.360 --> 0:09:48.000 it could have a locally unique number that potentially isn't 0:09:48.080 --> 0:09:51.480 globally unique. That means some other device somewhere else on 0:09:51.520 --> 0:09:54.520 the Internet could have that same address. Now, if the 0:09:54.559 --> 0:09:58.480 device is visible to the world at large, then it 0:09:58.520 --> 0:10:01.280 needs its own unique number or else than there's confusion 0:10:01.320 --> 0:10:03.560 because you would have more than one device with the 0:10:03.640 --> 0:10:06.280 same address, which would be kind of like if someone 0:10:06.320 --> 0:10:08.800 in your town somehow has the same address as you, 0:10:09.160 --> 0:10:11.200 but lives in a different part of town entirely. Like 0:10:11.280 --> 0:10:14.200 let's say there's for some reason, two different Oak Streets 0:10:14.240 --> 0:10:18.720 and they have similar numbering conventions for the houses, and 0:10:18.800 --> 0:10:22.360 you live in one twenty three Oak Street on one 0:10:22.400 --> 0:10:24.400 side of town, and someone else lives in one twenty 0:10:24.400 --> 0:10:26.280 three Oak Street on the other side of town, and 0:10:26.320 --> 0:10:28.680 you both would end up getting mail for each other 0:10:29.040 --> 0:10:31.959 on a pretty frequent basis. That would be the same issue. 0:10:32.000 --> 0:10:35.560 So you have to have unique addresses otherwise the whole 0:10:35.920 --> 0:10:39.040 function of the Internet starts to break down. Now, the 0:10:39.080 --> 0:10:41.600 IPv four approach was great and that it made it 0:10:41.679 --> 0:10:45.040 possible for machines to connect to other specific machines across 0:10:45.120 --> 0:10:48.040 a network of networks, which is what the Internet is. 0:10:48.440 --> 0:10:51.559 But while machines could do this fairly simply, it was 0:10:51.559 --> 0:10:54.600 a real bear for human beings because you know, remembering 0:10:54.640 --> 0:10:58.120 a sequence of four numbers for everything that you want 0:10:58.200 --> 0:11:01.240 to send mail to or you want to go visit 0:11:01.280 --> 0:11:03.920 a website on the World Wide Web, that would be 0:11:03.920 --> 0:11:07.880 a huge headache, right, Like, what was this one, two, seven, 0:11:08.040 --> 0:11:11.200 dot like it would just be a nightmare. So what 0:11:11.360 --> 0:11:14.920 was needed was a means to translate those numbers into 0:11:14.960 --> 0:11:18.360 some other format, a format that would be much easier 0:11:18.360 --> 0:11:21.079 for human beings to work with. And thus we enter 0:11:21.320 --> 0:11:25.320 the concept of domain names, which were created as part 0:11:25.320 --> 0:11:29.400 of the Domain Name System, which came into being around 0:11:29.440 --> 0:11:33.600 nineteen eighty three or so. The domain name system would 0:11:33.720 --> 0:11:37.240 allow users to rely on addresses made up of words 0:11:37.280 --> 0:11:41.000 and letters instead of seemingly random numbers. The machines are 0:11:41.000 --> 0:11:44.560 still communicating through numbers. The domain names and addresses are 0:11:44.600 --> 0:11:47.160 just a layer that's easier for humans to work with, 0:11:47.280 --> 0:11:49.840 kind of like programming languages, same sort of thing. It's 0:11:49.880 --> 0:11:53.160 a level of abstraction that's easier for us to handle 0:11:53.280 --> 0:11:55.960 than if we get down to the actual machine code. 0:11:56.360 --> 0:11:59.360 And so there was already precedents for this kind of 0:11:59.400 --> 0:12:02.880 approach using something that humans can work with. Machines can't 0:12:02.960 --> 0:12:06.360 natively work with that format, but you can have it 0:12:07.720 --> 0:12:12.840 interact or relate to machine code or in this case, 0:12:12.960 --> 0:12:17.000 IP addresses that would allow for machines to be able 0:12:17.000 --> 0:12:21.280 to actually make sense of the information. So those domain 0:12:21.360 --> 0:12:24.560 names and addresses, it's just a layer, and each of 0:12:24.600 --> 0:12:29.280 those corresponds to a numeric address. The domains themselves have 0:12:29.440 --> 0:12:31.840 multiple parts. Now, one of those parts is what we 0:12:31.960 --> 0:12:36.400 call the top level domain or TLD. This is what 0:12:36.720 --> 0:12:40.480 we're concerned with when it comes to VeriSign. The TLD 0:12:40.679 --> 0:12:43.400 is the extension that follows the dot at the end 0:12:43.440 --> 0:12:46.480 of a basic URL. So, for example, years ago, I 0:12:46.559 --> 0:12:51.280 wrote for the website HowStuffWorks dot Com. Well, that dot 0:12:51.360 --> 0:12:55.240 com part is the top level domain. The comm stands 0:12:55.240 --> 0:12:58.720 for commercial, and the dot com domain was meant for 0:12:58.760 --> 0:13:03.359 commercial organization. It's also far and away the most popular 0:13:03.960 --> 0:13:07.440 of the top level domains. The house stuff Works bit 0:13:07.760 --> 0:13:10.360 of the address would be what we would call a 0:13:10.520 --> 0:13:14.199 second level domain. The www bit at the beginning of 0:13:14.240 --> 0:13:17.760 the web URL would be a subdomain. But it's the 0:13:17.800 --> 0:13:20.920 top level domains we're really concerned about when we're talking 0:13:21.040 --> 0:13:26.040 about vera sign. So we'll talk more about what that 0:13:26.160 --> 0:13:28.280 means in just a moment, But first let's take a 0:13:28.360 --> 0:13:40.960 quick break to thank our sponsors. All right, So, in 0:13:41.080 --> 0:13:43.920 order to get a domain for a website, you have 0:13:43.960 --> 0:13:49.200 to purchase your domain from a registrar. Registrars are the 0:13:49.559 --> 0:13:55.160 companies responsible for selling and assigning a domain to a customer. 0:13:55.360 --> 0:13:59.079 So if you want a top level domain where your 0:13:59.080 --> 0:14:03.800 top level domain is, well, ultimately your registrar has to 0:14:03.800 --> 0:14:07.800 get that from a registry. These are two different services, 0:14:08.080 --> 0:14:13.280 they're similar, and in fact VeriSign itself historically has operated 0:14:13.320 --> 0:14:17.800 as both, though that changed many years ago. At this point, 0:14:17.840 --> 0:14:22.960 we'll get to that. So if you wanta dot com domain, ultimately, 0:14:23.200 --> 0:14:26.360 once you go up the chain, the supply chain for 0:14:26.760 --> 0:14:30.560 domain names, VeriSign is the stopping point for that. VeriSign 0:14:30.680 --> 0:14:37.440 is the only company that ultimately oversees the registration of 0:14:37.560 --> 0:14:41.200 dot com domains. So how did that happen? How is 0:14:41.240 --> 0:14:45.480 it that a single company became the gatekeeper for the 0:14:45.640 --> 0:14:48.760 dot com TLD. Well, we've got a lot more history 0:14:48.800 --> 0:14:51.080 to get through before we can actually answer that, because 0:14:51.120 --> 0:14:54.600 this is complicated stuff, and this history also gets a 0:14:54.600 --> 0:14:57.000 bit fuzzy because in real life it could be hard 0:14:57.040 --> 0:15:00.040 to point out a firm date and say definitively this 0:15:00.240 --> 0:15:04.680 is when it began. But let's try and muddle our 0:15:04.720 --> 0:15:08.320 way through this. So the DNS, the domain name system, 0:15:08.600 --> 0:15:12.520 becomes a thing around nineteen eighty three, a decade before 0:15:12.560 --> 0:15:14.840 most folks would even have heard of the Internet at 0:15:14.840 --> 0:15:17.320 that point, Because I would argue it was the World 0:15:17.360 --> 0:15:19.800 Wide Web that introduced a lot of people to the 0:15:19.840 --> 0:15:22.400 concept of the Internet, so much so that for a 0:15:22.400 --> 0:15:25.720 lot of folks the two are synonymous, although the World 0:15:25.720 --> 0:15:28.480 Wide Web is just one set of services that exists 0:15:28.600 --> 0:15:32.840 on top of the Internet. Before the DNS, engineers working 0:15:32.920 --> 0:15:36.120 on ARPINET had established a sort of catalog to keep 0:15:36.160 --> 0:15:40.800 track of network infrastructure, sockets, addresses, and other words. John 0:15:40.880 --> 0:15:44.680 Postel and Joyce K Reynolds were chiefly responsible for keeping 0:15:44.720 --> 0:15:49.160 track of IP addresses from the earliest days, which is 0:15:49.240 --> 0:15:51.760 pretty wild because this was just kind of a side 0:15:51.880 --> 0:15:56.120 quest to their main responsibilities. It wasn't their job to 0:15:56.200 --> 0:15:58.800 do this, they did it in addition to their jobs. 0:15:59.200 --> 0:16:03.800 Somewhat orally, a department that ultimately became known as the 0:16:03.840 --> 0:16:09.040 Internet Assigned Numbers Authority or IANA would start to take 0:16:09.160 --> 0:16:13.600 form now according to various RFCs, which stands for Request 0:16:13.640 --> 0:16:17.640 for Comments. RFCs are in large part the documentation the 0:16:17.760 --> 0:16:21.880 historical documents that help us keep track of how the 0:16:22.360 --> 0:16:26.840 Internet gradually took shape, and they are hard to follow 0:16:27.280 --> 0:16:30.400 if you're not an engineer, and I'm not. They are 0:16:30.840 --> 0:16:33.920 a challenge to follow because they weren't necessarily written to 0:16:34.040 --> 0:16:39.600 be like a historical documentation, they were an ongoing discussion 0:16:39.680 --> 0:16:43.080 among the various people working on the systems to keep 0:16:43.200 --> 0:16:47.840 up with what's going on and to share developments. Anyway, 0:16:48.320 --> 0:16:51.720 the first appearance of ia in A in an RFC 0:16:51.840 --> 0:16:55.280 documentation was somewhere in the late nineteen eighties. But those 0:16:55.400 --> 0:16:59.480 very same documents that mention ia in a by name 0:16:59.640 --> 0:17:03.400 for the time say essentially that the department, or the 0:17:03.400 --> 0:17:07.000 functions at least were as old as arpinnet itself. The 0:17:07.040 --> 0:17:10.000 engineers just hadn't documented an official name for it for 0:17:10.080 --> 0:17:13.800 a couple of decades now. In addition to Postel's work, 0:17:14.600 --> 0:17:19.000 an engineer named Elizabeth Feinler developed a directory of numerical 0:17:19.080 --> 0:17:21.760 addresses reference through a list of host names and a 0:17:21.800 --> 0:17:27.720 document titled hosts dot txt. Feindler would manually add host 0:17:27.800 --> 0:17:32.439 names and their assigned numeric addresses to the directory, and 0:17:32.920 --> 0:17:35.879 it was Feinler's department that gradually developed the idea for 0:17:35.960 --> 0:17:38.400 domain names to make it easier for humans to work 0:17:38.440 --> 0:17:41.879 with the system instead of having to do this cross referencing, 0:17:42.040 --> 0:17:44.840 where you know, you look up a host name, like 0:17:44.920 --> 0:17:48.040 you know what host name you want to send information to, 0:17:48.320 --> 0:17:49.879 so you look it up in this directory so you 0:17:49.880 --> 0:17:52.359 can find the IP address you need to use in 0:17:52.440 --> 0:17:56.000 order to send the information there. Well, that's already complicated 0:17:56.119 --> 0:17:58.400 enough just on its own, but it was getting far 0:17:58.480 --> 0:18:03.199 more complicated as more machines were joining the network. You know, 0:18:03.280 --> 0:18:05.959 each time a new machine joins the network, it adds 0:18:06.000 --> 0:18:09.879 to the complexity of the overall system. That complexity would 0:18:09.920 --> 0:18:14.120 grow considerably throughout the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties. Now, 0:18:14.160 --> 0:18:18.439 for a long time, those machines joining the networks were 0:18:18.560 --> 0:18:25.240 either from research institutions, universities and colleges, or government agencies, 0:18:25.240 --> 0:18:28.080 including the military, And in fact, the military and large 0:18:28.119 --> 0:18:31.399 part was funding a lot of the work going into this. 0:18:31.800 --> 0:18:36.000 Keep in mind, you know, ARPINET started as a defense project, 0:18:36.200 --> 0:18:39.320 right DARPA what is today called DARPA. Back in the day, 0:18:39.359 --> 0:18:41.760 it was called ARPA. So it all started as a 0:18:41.800 --> 0:18:45.520 defense thing, and for the longest time, the government oversaw stuff. 0:18:45.600 --> 0:18:50.040 But gradually that would start to shift as more, you know, 0:18:50.440 --> 0:18:54.040 non government folks were starting to get involved in the network. 0:18:54.359 --> 0:18:58.439 John Postel continued to oversee the process of assigning names 0:18:58.480 --> 0:19:02.119 and addresses up to the late nineteen nineties, which is 0:19:02.119 --> 0:19:04.720 pretty phenomenal because by then you're getting into the dot 0:19:04.760 --> 0:19:09.240 com days. But around ninety seven, the United States government 0:19:09.320 --> 0:19:15.200 stepped in. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration or NTIA 0:19:15.280 --> 0:19:17.760 we'll talk about them later, which itself is part of 0:19:17.760 --> 0:19:20.720 the US Department of Commerce, sought to create a new 0:19:20.840 --> 0:19:25.280 nonprofit organization that would oversee functions such as assigning DNS 0:19:25.320 --> 0:19:28.640 addresses and that kind of thing. In late nineteen ninety eight, 0:19:28.920 --> 0:19:33.200 it created the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers 0:19:33.320 --> 0:19:37.680 or ICON i CAN if you prefer ICA n N. 0:19:38.080 --> 0:19:44.800 Now i CAN assumed the responsibility of overseeing the DNS 0:19:45.119 --> 0:19:49.600 functions of IANA IAANA. So lots of acronyms in this too. 0:19:49.600 --> 0:19:52.119 I'm apologizing for that, but you know I wasn't the 0:19:52.119 --> 0:19:54.720 one who came up with him. So John Postel was 0:19:55.200 --> 0:19:58.119 meant to be the chief technology officer for i CAN, 0:19:58.359 --> 0:20:01.720 but sadly he passed away following a surgical procedure and 0:20:01.800 --> 0:20:06.240 he died about a month after i CAN was first incorporated. Okay, 0:20:06.320 --> 0:20:09.359 but now we have to talk about another organization that 0:20:09.520 --> 0:20:11.920 was operating at the same time as all the stuff 0:20:11.960 --> 0:20:14.800 I just mentioned. This is where Elizabeth Feindler comes back 0:20:14.800 --> 0:20:18.280 into it, and this would be the Network Information Center 0:20:18.800 --> 0:20:23.840 the NIC or NICK, later known as INTERNICK. This organization 0:20:23.920 --> 0:20:27.080 grew out of the Stanford Research Institute, which is now 0:20:27.119 --> 0:20:30.879 known as SRI International. And I'm just going to refer 0:20:30.960 --> 0:20:33.800 to it as INTERNICK as a matter of convenience, but 0:20:33.840 --> 0:20:37.000 it actually didn't get that name until like the nineteen nineties. 0:20:37.160 --> 0:20:39.119 I'm just going to use that name rather than switching 0:20:39.160 --> 0:20:40.960 back and forth because we're already going to have so 0:20:41.000 --> 0:20:44.280 many different names and acronyms in this and initialisms. So 0:20:44.680 --> 0:20:47.880 internick was kind of like a reference library. It maintained 0:20:47.880 --> 0:20:50.760 a directory of address numbers and published them to the 0:20:50.800 --> 0:20:55.359 network at large, and it handled actual registration requests. So 0:20:55.600 --> 0:20:59.880 this was Elizabeth Feindler's group. Stanford oversaw Internet until night 0:20:59.840 --> 0:21:04.720 teen ninety one, and at that point the department changed hands. 0:21:05.119 --> 0:21:08.680 And this is bringing us ever closer to VERI sign. 0:21:08.720 --> 0:21:12.080 We're not there yet, but we're getting closer. So the 0:21:12.160 --> 0:21:16.520 company that would take over Internet in nineteen ninety one 0:21:16.720 --> 0:21:21.040 was called Network Solutions. Now, technically the US government gave 0:21:21.080 --> 0:21:24.800 the job of overseeing Internet to another company called Government 0:21:24.840 --> 0:21:29.000 Systems Incorporated, But then Government Systems turned around and subcontracted 0:21:29.040 --> 0:21:32.440 the work to Network Solutions. This is a great business 0:21:32.440 --> 0:21:34.080 to get in. By the way, if you can be 0:21:34.119 --> 0:21:38.520 a business that lands huge contracts and then you subcontract 0:21:38.600 --> 0:21:42.320 that work to someone else and you just keep the difference, man, 0:21:42.480 --> 0:21:46.040 what a racket. Not saying that government systems was a racket, 0:21:46.040 --> 0:21:50.000 but golly sure, I sure could get into that biz anyway. 0:21:50.040 --> 0:21:53.160 So Network Solutions got its start in nineteen seventy nine 0:21:53.280 --> 0:21:56.000 as a consulting company in the tech sector, and in 0:21:56.080 --> 0:21:58.919 nineteen ninety three it won a bid to become the 0:21:59.040 --> 0:22:04.400 exclusive register nation services provider for non military entities wishing 0:22:04.440 --> 0:22:07.800 to register a domain on the Internet. It won this 0:22:07.920 --> 0:22:12.400 bid by being using by following a very very sound strategy, 0:22:12.520 --> 0:22:15.800 being the only company that actually bid for the gig. Now, 0:22:15.840 --> 0:22:18.480 this meant that Network Solutions was the one and only 0:22:18.640 --> 0:22:21.160 place someone could go to if they wanted to register 0:22:21.359 --> 0:22:25.040 a TLD that was in the dot org, dot net 0:22:25.080 --> 0:22:30.280 and dot com categories. Network Solutions had a monopoly on 0:22:30.359 --> 0:22:33.520 that business. Now, I call it a business, but in truth, 0:22:33.600 --> 0:22:37.000 at the time it wasn't really a business because Network 0:22:37.040 --> 0:22:41.159 Solutions was not allowed to charge for domain name registrations. 0:22:41.840 --> 0:22:46.080 Yet it was still a free service ultimately provided by 0:22:46.080 --> 0:22:51.000 the government, so the government was essentially paying this company 0:22:51.040 --> 0:22:54.439 Government Systems, which in turn was paying Network Solutions to 0:22:54.600 --> 0:22:59.680 oversee this process. But they weren't turning people into customers. 0:22:59.720 --> 0:23:03.680 They were providing a service for free that was government funded. 0:23:04.119 --> 0:23:09.240 In nineteen ninety five, another company called Science Applications International 0:23:09.280 --> 0:23:13.760 Corporation or SAIC, or as I prefer to call them, PSYCH, 0:23:14.680 --> 0:23:18.840 they acquired Network Solutions for four point seven million dollars. 0:23:19.440 --> 0:23:23.600 Keep that number in mind, because holy cats, will that 0:23:24.080 --> 0:23:27.919 be a world of difference in just five years. Further 0:23:28.000 --> 0:23:32.280 into this history, not long after PSYCH took over control 0:23:32.440 --> 0:23:38.400 of Network Solutions, the National Science Foundation or NSF, gave 0:23:38.560 --> 0:23:42.399 PSYCH and therefore Network Solutions, the power to charge a 0:23:42.520 --> 0:23:47.080 fee for registering domain names. This is where things start 0:23:47.119 --> 0:23:50.479 to shift, where now it is a business. Before it 0:23:50.520 --> 0:23:52.840 was a service that was government funded. Now it's a 0:23:52.880 --> 0:23:56.560 business where Network Solutions can charge a fee in order 0:23:56.600 --> 0:23:59.920 to register a domain name to customers. Not at that point, 0:24:00.160 --> 0:24:03.520 Network Solutions began to charge applicants a one hundred dollars 0:24:03.760 --> 0:24:06.439 and for one hundred dollars you could register a domain 0:24:06.520 --> 0:24:09.520 name for a period of two years, and after two 0:24:09.600 --> 0:24:12.879 years you would need to renew your registration. Thirty percent 0:24:13.000 --> 0:24:16.200 of the fee that Network Solutions charged would end up 0:24:16.240 --> 0:24:19.800 going to the National Science Foundation in SF to help 0:24:20.040 --> 0:24:24.200 fund other services. But this rubbed people the wrong way 0:24:24.680 --> 0:24:28.679 because it was a single service provider. Here there was 0:24:28.720 --> 0:24:32.200 no competition. You couldn't go anywhere else to register a 0:24:32.320 --> 0:24:37.520 top level domain URL or address. So in nineteen ninety 0:24:37.560 --> 0:24:40.880 seven a lawsuit argued that Network Solutions was in fact 0:24:41.000 --> 0:24:45.440 a monopoly and because thirty percent of the fees being 0:24:45.480 --> 0:24:48.480