Live data from Hacker News

If ICANN only charges 18¢ per domain name, why am I paying $10? (2014)

webmasters.stackexchange.com

1–10 of 118 posts

Re: If ICANN only charges 18¢ per domain name, why am I paying $10? (2014)

#3
Previous thread where I explain that the stackexchange accepted answer (now with 78+ votes instead of 41) outlines more of the history rather than answer the question in a technical way for a technical audience:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9358902

(small correction: my previous answer had a typo of "17 million" instead of "11.7 million")

Re: If ICANN only charges 18¢ per domain name, why am I paying $10? (2014)

#5
post #4

Ignoring the fact that the revenue goes to a private company there's one good reason why 18¢ would be a bad idea - already too many domains are hoarded by a small group just for resell; I imagine it would be even worse then.

And thus lets charge 5x more and gave this money to the government appointed but not government owned company. Hardly a justification.

Re: If ICANN only charges 18¢ per domain name, why am I paying $10? (2014)

#6
I don't claim to know what the fair price for the .com registry. I will say this though the hosting isn't free. There are millions of requests per second across all networks from all across the world. They must respond with low latency. The major registries are nearly always under DDoS attack. There is a reason verisign has some of the best DDoS protection.

All the data centers across the world, the network connectivity, the DDoS hardware, servers, custom software and staff to run it all must be expensive.

Re: If ICANN only charges 18¢ per domain name, why am I paying $10? (2014)

#7
post #5
post #4

Ignoring the fact that the revenue goes to a private company there's one good reason why 18¢ would be a bad idea - already too many domains are hoarded by a small group just for resell; I imagine it would be even worse then.

And thus lets charge 5x more and gave this money to the government appointed but not government owned company. Hardly a justification.

I can only think of one theory that could defend the US gov decision. Perhaps they didn't want to directly charge for the com domain to make it appear more open and "commercial" to foreign actors (states, companies).

Re: If ICANN only charges 18¢ per domain name, why am I paying $10? (2014)

#8
post #6

I don't claim to know what the fair price for the .com registry. I will say this though the hosting isn't free. There are millions of requests per second across all networks from all across the world. They must respond with low latency. The major registries are nearly always under DDoS attack. There is a reason verisign has some of the best DDoS protection. All the data centers across the world, the network connectiv…

> All the data centers across the world, the network connectivity, the DDoS hardware, servers, custom software and staff to run it all must be expensive.

We’re just talking about the DNS part here; not the hosting. Maintaining a bunch of DNS servers doesn’t cost $9 per domain.

Re: If ICANN only charges 18¢ per domain name, why am I paying $10? (2014)

#9
post #6

I don't claim to know what the fair price for the .com registry. I will say this though the hosting isn't free. There are millions of requests per second across all networks from all across the world. They must respond with low latency. The major registries are nearly always under DDoS attack. There is a reason verisign has some of the best DDoS protection. All the data centers across the world, the network connectiv…

Yeah, but is that anywhere near the 1 billion in renevue (According to the top answer) that verisign brings in?

Re: If ICANN only charges 18¢ per domain name, why am I paying $10? (2014)

#10
I think if Google and Firefox join forces and create a Dns override in their browsers that resolves domains without querying the root servers it could be a real game changer. I remember this used to be an option in very old versions of IE where some company it using some plugin. This can be an end to all such monopolistic tactics and domain squatting.
Post reply on HN