[ilurk]

I'm a bit confused about the whole DNS thing.

Namely when I buy a domain name from who exactly am I buying it from?

Put in other words, what's the best way to buy a domain name and avoid the middleman fees?

In terms of renewal, does it make a difference if you buy it from the root TLD authority (not sure if saying something silly here) or some squatter/middle-man/domain-park?

Who decides on the price hike for the next year?

I find the whole DNS management quite broken. The new TLDs is a good example. .dev got owned by Google and a bunch of other TLDs got acquired by some VC backed digital-estate company.

[joedavison]

The hierarchy of Internet domain names goes something like this:

ICANN -> TLD operator (registry) -> registrar -> reseller (optional) -> registrant (you)

[ilurk]

So I found this article [1] about domain name transfer. Which clarified one doubt that I had. As I was under the impression that you were hopelessly stuck at paying rent for life middleman (to a reseller or in this case a registrar).

This raises another question. Is it worth starting you own registrar? Or it is fee prohibitive?

[1] http://lifehacker.com/5794507/how-to-jump-ship-from-godaddy-...

[jessriedel]

Historically, who in this chain collected the seigniorage for domain names worth much more than the transaction cost, i.e., email.com? Just whoever snatched it up first, usually a reseller? I always wondered domain names weren't auctioned off like other scarce resources whose initial distribution is controlled by the government, such as wireless spectrum.