Should Asgardia create a ccTLD

Total number of votes: 30

90% Yes.

10% No.

Jan 15, 17 / Aqu 15, 01 01:17 UTC

Asgardian TLD  

Should Asgardia create it's own Top Level Domain? Please suggest what it should be below.

Tack.

Jan 15, 17 / Aqu 15, 01 06:41 UTC

Would it be best as .ag or .asg?

Jan 15, 17 / Aqu 15, 01 19:36 UTC

Free is almost never a clever option, almost always resulting in some form of privacy breach, minimally. These things are quite cheap, commonly anyway.

Is there any reason why we should require an entire TLD? I fail to see how the existing is insufficient for purpose. Also, why are you intentionally limiting to just a few letters like it's the nineties or something?

Jan 17, 17 / Aqu 17, 01 13:18 UTC

I was under the impression the country code standard was ISO 3166, and thusly the responsibility of ISO3166/MA. ICAAN being merely assigning what systems that code goes to, not the code itself. And you don't select this code, either, ISO3166/MA does.

But, why should we actually require to obtain one, anyway? What problem(s) does this solve?

Jan 19, 17 / Aqu 19, 01 19:36 UTC

I concure with Petrv's suggestion of .aa. However this is one for the list of actions once Asgardia is recognised as a country in its own right.

Jan 19, 17 / Aqu 19, 01 22:11 UTC

There's no much room for discussion (there's always room for thinking and sharing!).

I can't conceive a country without its own ccTLD[1] and Asgardia is a place to share knowledge and technology. In my opinion it's not just a TLD but a whole new level of a caring country. How? Providing some not so basic but useful services, I'll now add my suggestions:

Supposing that the TLD is finally "asgardia", there would start with a tree like the following,

  • auth.asgardia (this could provide OpenID and OAuth2 to every citizen not just for Asgardia!. [2]

  • www.gov.asgardia (main gov site) (gov.asgardia: TCP/80; HTTP redirection to www.; for security reasons)

-- auth.gov.asgardia (this could provide OpenID and OAuth2 to every minister not just for Asgardia!)

-- each ministry can have its own MX entry so ministers can get their minister_mailbox@a.ministry.gov.asgardia

--- mailbox ex.: roberto.salgado@ic.ministry.gov.asgardia (using my name)

-- .informationandcommunication.ministry.gov.asgardia (ic.ministry.gov.asgardia)

-- .justice.ministry.gov.asgardia

-- .science.ministry.gov.asgardia

-- .citizenship.ministry.gov.asgardia

-- .foreignaffairs.ministry.gov.asgardia

-- .finance.ministry.gov.asgardia

-- .tradeandcommerce.ministry.gov.asgardia

-- .youthandeducation.ministry.gov.asgardia

-- .safetyandsecurity.ministry.gov.asgardia

-- .equityandresources.ministry.gov.asgardia

-- .administrativeaffairs.ministry.gov.asgardia

  • www.services.asgardia (to provide services to different ministries with an easier way to find them)

-- library.services.asgardia

-- news.services.asgardia

-- wiki.services.asgardia

  • www.research.asgardia ( Newsletters; papers, white papers; let's put just some extra examples )

-- .cosmos.research.asgardia

-- .spacesecurity.research.asgardia

-- .cloudcomputing.research.asgardia

-- .blackmatter.research.asgardia

And this is one of my favourites: - .citizen.asgardia...

There can be a MX entry so citizens can get a citizen.mailbox@citizen.asgardia

Here we can give Asgardians something more than just an ID, a mailbox and an authentication service. We can give them their own second level subdomain...

-- Imagine this is for me: drober.citizen.asgardia with its own NS entry, so I could handle from this to my devices:

--- If I handle the NS entry for drober.citizen.asgardia (luckily having any IPv6 range) I could set:

---- blog.drober.citizen.asgardia, washingmachine.drober.citizen.asgardia, ownstuff.drober.citizen.asgardia, ftp.drober.citizen.asgardia,

This is obvously something not really needed but is good to know your gov is there for you, individuals.

Links: [1] TLD list: http://data.iana.org/TLD/tlds-alpha-by-domain.txt

[2] OAuth2 and OpenID using Docker: https://hub.docker.com/r/oryam/hydra/

Jan 20, 17 / Aqu 20, 01 17:07 UTC

Again, if attempting to follow ISO 3166 then you don't pick the country code, ISO 3166/MA does.

There isn't much room for discussion - limited mostly to:

  • What problem would having ccTLD actually solve?
  • Taking this service and all the mistakes/errors/problems as an example, what makes you think it's sane or even viable to operate at that level?
  • What in that list isn't possible with the current arrangement?

Jan 31, 17 / Pis 03, 01 00:42 UTC

It would prequiste recognition by the UN to gain that, adhering to ISO 3166. And what form that would be wouldn't be decided by drober, or even our larger collective but ISO 3166/MA.

Again, what problem would this actually solve? As in, what would it allow us to do that we can't already do right now?

Further, by extension it implies complience with RFC 1591. What evidence has been displayed this is likely to be achieved? Consider the consequences of failure there and consider carefully the way it's taken over a month to deploy a simple PM system in a forum, the security and privacy risks created in the implimentation of the forum and the response times to the ones highlighted, the mistakes they made with other peoples data before they'd even considered a forum...

Feb 2, 17 / Pis 05, 01 20:33 UTC

I myself was thinking of recommending it but I thought there are far more pressing issues which require more attention. I am glad that the community members of Asgardia here are open to the idea at this stage itself. I've been looking at the developments at ICANN for a little over 2 years now. I am an NCUC member of GNSO as well as a member at various working groups there as well.

A ccTLD is of course prefered for a country but it is limited to two letters. I don't think any two letter combinations for Asgardia works well. As many of you here mentioned, only suitable ccTLD would be ".aa", remaining all have been already assigned to other countries. There was actually a Cross Community Working Group on Use of Country/Territory Names as TLDs, I haven't read its recommendations nor its reports but I remember attending a session at ICANN57, where the CCWG members mentioned that there hasn't been any substantive outcome yet. In the first round of new gTLD process, there were some unexpected strings. The curious case was of course of ".africa" gTLD, as it represented Africa as a whole, several stakeholders were opposed to the idea of delegating it as a gTLD. This was one case which prompted the idea of perhaps expanding the definition of ccTLDs. In months of come, I hope that the CCWG would come up with some result to bring about changes in existing ccTLD criteria. If it does, perhaps we could think of other strings like .asg or even .asgardia as ccTLD.

As @EyeR rightly mentioned, UN membership is kind of a prerequisite for Asgardia to achieve that. I also think that Asgardia's involvement should not just be limited to getting a ccTLD but also make sure the voices of her citizens are heard in global internet governance processes. One good way to do that is by applying for membership of Government Advisory Committee (GAC) at ICANN, as soon as we get recognised by UN. Sorry, if this post seemed a big long.

I'm very much glad that we are having discussions of these sorts. I think that discussions like these are the one's which are going to lay down foundation for our future endeavours.

Mar 6, 17 / Ari 09, 01 15:02 UTC

Taking the start from the very nice and well detailed @drober 's post, I'll try to think "bigger", moving away from the "Earth place"... I mean: Asgardia won't be a traditional country: it will be out of the Earth and, maybe, even moving into space (it can be done, and we shouldn't forget it). That's the future's "big picture". So, all good with @drober 's details but, about the TLD, I think an Xnn should be better for us as it cuts the (static) link with the Earth, defining us "into the space".
To cope with @EyeR questions: the TLD's "X" part may help the routers to recognize the eXternal routing as "out of the Earth's Internet" (which will become "local" at the time of Solar system's exploration).

Here (https://asgardia.space/en/forum/forum/feedback-11/topic/feature-request-internal-currency-3015/) I was theoryzing about the currency (we should have one) but the same may be thought about the TLD, so .xas would be nice to have for Asgardia (X = eXternal, AS = Asgardia), wishing to keep a three-letters code as in ISO-3166-1-alpha-3 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-3) where, by the way, "XAA to XZZ may be used as private, user-assigned, codes".

For the moment the .space suffix can be enough, as we're not "a nation" but, for the future, the TLD thing should be evaluated "in space terms".
For the same reasons, I don't agree with .com websites related to Asgardia (e.g. VoA) mainly 'cause .com TLD is under USA management.

Mar 6, 17 / Ari 09, 01 15:43 UTC

TLD isn't really involved with routing, tho, really. Traffic isn't directed by .com or .org. Even lookups are not, although the body responsible for is the source of trickledown.

Routing is done on a much lower level, and then entire DNS system exists because the features invovled with routing are commonly lesser usuable for the average user, and was designed to sit far above this system as an independant layer.

And again, you don't decide the code you get in ISO 3166, that's what ISO 3166/MA is for.

Mar 6, 17 / Ari 09, 01 16:28 UTC

Ok but why telling about "user-assigned codes" into ISO-3166-1-alpha-3, then? (XAA to XZZ).

There are also "reserved codes", e.g. "UK" was "reserved by request of Breat Britain", thus we may ask "AA" (or, IMHO, "XA" or even "AX") to be "reserved by request of Asgardia government"... when we'll have one.

  Last edited by:  Luca Coianiz (Asgardian)  on Mar 6, 17 / Ari 09, 01 16:36 UTC, Total number of edits: 1 time
Reason: two chars TLD

Mar 6, 17 / Ari 09, 01 17:15 UTC

Request.

Doesn't assure it will be granted.

Ultimately, it represents additional headache - and ideally to provide a sensible solution, additional investment and from what I can make out doesn't particularly enable us to do anything we cannot currently do already.

Mar 6, 17 / Ari 09, 01 17:26 UTC

Starting from the point I'm not against to what you're saying, I still prefer we'll behave like an independent nation instead of an independent (business) company: that's why the TLD thing, IMHO.
There is nothing one can't do with a .com (or .at) site but, anyway, we're having a .space one: it's just kind of different way to think. ;-)

Mar 6, 17 / Ari 09, 01 18:33 UTC

Different isn't nessicelery a bad thing.

If you examine heirarchal order structure, and clear profit drive, you'd notice most nations are companies. With the various goverments commonly being registered trading companies of the parent company.

It's not particularly clever that Asgarida is registered to a body that is itself registered to a body - but much of this has contained little thought, and another initiative that hasn't been thought through to logical conclusion is hardly going to assist matters.

As to more "independant" behaviour, this is "best" demonstrated by failing to adhere to a "standard" that won't provide any particular benefit - or cost to it's failure in adherence - simply because everyone else has.

  Updated  on Mar 6, 17 / Ari 09, 01 18:36 UTC, Total number of edits: 1 time
Reason: Typo