Am I right or wrong about this?

[GTaudiophile]

I was under the impression that there only a handful of TLDS (Top Level Domain Servers) and that most of them are owned/operated by the US Military/Government. (The United Nations had a problem with this recently.)

Is this true or am I full of it?

 

[Safeway]

Majestic12 would know. He is 38 levels above TS and is in S-5. Find him and ask?

 

[imported_Baloo]

You are full of it, none of them are owned by either the US military, nor the US government.

 

[HannibalX]

ATT.

 

[Sphexi]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_nameserver

No such thing as a TLDS, they're called root name servers, there's a bunch of em, and several are actually distributed systems, not located in one specific place. They are pretty much all in the US though, a few military, one NASA, some college ones, and one or two held by corporations/organizations (ICANN/VeriSign/Cogent/etc.)

 

[TallBill]

Ah, yet more evidence that I know so little.

 

[GTaudiophile]

Originally posted by: Sphexi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_nameserver

No such thing as a TLDS, they're called root name servers, there's a bunch of em, and several are actually distributed systems, not located in one specific place. They are pretty much all in the US though, a few military, one NASA, some college ones, and one or two held by corporations/organizations (ICANN/VeriSign/Cogent/etc.)

Okay, those are the ones.

Another stupid question: could the Interweb as we know it function without those servers?

 

[jjones]

You'll never take down Skynet. The war is inevitable.

 

[Bateluer]

Originally posted by: GTaudiophile

Originally posted by: Sphexi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_nameserver

No such thing as a TLDS, they're called root name servers, there's a bunch of em, and several are actually distributed systems, not located in one specific place. They are pretty much all in the US though, a few military, one NASA, some college ones, and one or two held by corporations/organizations (ICANN/VeriSign/Cogent/etc.)

Okay, those are the ones.

Another stupid question: could the Interweb as we know it function without those servers?

If I recall correctly, those are the servers that translate text URLs to IP addresses. So unless you can memorize IPs for all the websites you visit, no.

 

[Scarpozzi]

Originally posted by: jjones
You'll never take down Skynet. The war is inevitable.

Exactly. Despite the fact that you can kill a terminator in the present, the kill becomes a documented event in the future....thus Skynet will continue to send terminators earlier and earlier to ensure that you are stopped.

 

[MmmSkyscraper]

Originally posted by: Bateluer
If I recall correctly, those are the servers that translate text URLs to IP addresses. So unless you can memorize IPs for all the websites you visit, no.

127.0.0.1 is the best!

 

[Mr Pickles]

Well I'm no top level, but I'm somewhere around 65. I've been playing with my lower level right now, just for fun. But its OK, bc my top level is gaining rested experience, which will help me grind to 70 faster.

 

[Sphexi]

Originally posted by: Bateluer

Originally posted by: GTaudiophile

Originally posted by: Sphexi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_nameserver

No such thing as a TLDS, they're called root name servers, there's a bunch of em, and several are actually distributed systems, not located in one specific place. They are pretty much all in the US though, a few military, one NASA, some college ones, and one or two held by corporations/organizations (ICANN/VeriSign/Cogent/etc.)

Okay, those are the ones.

Another stupid question: could the Interweb as we know it function without those servers?

If I recall correctly, those are the servers that translate text URLs to IP addresses. So unless you can memorize IPs for all the websites you visit, no.

Technically, these are just database servers that hold the information on what domain name is assigned to what IP address. There's lower end servers that will pull copies of the tables from these, then there's your provider that will keep their own records (temporarily) to save bandwidth on their end, and so on.

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: GTaudiophile

Originally posted by: Sphexi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_nameserver

No such thing as a TLDS, they're called root name servers, there's a bunch of em, and several are actually distributed systems, not located in one specific place. They are pretty much all in the US though, a few military, one NASA, some college ones, and one or two held by corporations/organizations (ICANN/VeriSign/Cogent/etc.)

Okay, those are the ones.

Another stupid question: could the Interweb as we know it function without those servers?

No. They the last stop in DNS. You would have to re-write DNS in order to function without them. Of course the internet would still work, but DNS wouldn't - effectively breaking most things.

Sphexi - technically the roots don't associate IPs to hosts, but name servers to zones (domain names). So you don't ask the roots for an ip address of a host, you ask it "who is the name server for mydomain.com.?" All of this information is cached in whatever name server you are querying.

 

[Atheus]

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: GTaudiophile

Originally posted by: Sphexi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_nameserver

No such thing as a TLDS, they're called root name servers, there's a bunch of em, and several are actually distributed systems, not located in one specific place. They are pretty much all in the US though, a few military, one NASA, some college ones, and one or two held by corporations/organizations (ICANN/VeriSign/Cogent/etc.)

Okay, those are the ones.

Another stupid question: could the Interweb as we know it function without those servers?

No. They the last stop in DNS. You would have to re-write DNS in order to function without them. Of course the internet would still work, but DNS wouldn't - effectively breaking most things.

Sphexi - technically the roots don't associate IPs to hosts, but name servers to zones (domain names). So you don't ask the roots for an ip address of a host, you ask it "who is the name server for mydomain.com.?" All of this information is cached in whatever name server you are querying.

New ones would be quickly set up though, and their databases could be easily rebuilt from lower level servers, so if the real point of this question is - "could the US government shut down the internet if they wanted to" - then the answer is no.