--On Tuesday, May 21, 2013 11:07 +0200 Stephane Bortzmeyer <bortzmeyer@xxxxxx> wrote: >... > Although these tests certainly contributed to the good > technical quality of the name servers, they were removed both > for commercial reasons (a registry has to make money to pay > its employees) and because it was easier to have the same > rules for ccTLDs and gTLDs (and ICANN forbids these technical > tests in gTLDs). Occasional fantasies about IETF enforcement power and the Protocol Police notwithstanding, it seems to me that, if one wanted to require standards-conforming nameservers, the most (and maybe only) effective way to do that would be requirements in the contractual agreements between TLD registries and their registrants. Recursively applying requirements down the tree is not a new idea; RFC 1591 uses that language more than once. If we believe that standards-compliance would improve Internet stability and/or security (to say nothing of the predictability of the user experience), then ICANN's forbidding registries from imposing technical conformance requirements, if true, would seem to violate their charter and bylaws. Do you have any idea where that restriction came from? Or what Mark and others should do to get it changed? best, john