"We peaked at 12."<p>Peaked. And that probably includes the sysadmin who was required to watch it.<p>Where are the articles on the new ridiculous TLD's?<p>A while back the IP address for the FTP copy of the root.zone changed.<p>And sure enough, the file is now full of crap like .buzz, .house and .kitchen<p>I cannot even read through the whole zone anymore. It's too long.<p>There are some gems in there though. And some fool paid $185,000+ for each one.<p>I have been running my own root for years and this is why.<p>Snip, snip. No more .buzz<p>Very easy to set up up your own custom root and to filter out the crap TLD's. But, like with the ceremony in this article, some folks think that ICANN has some sort of "authority" on how people use domain names.<p>Whole .com zone (=public information) fits on a USB stick.<p>And the HOSTS file remains as a failsafe, if you have to use someone else's resolver.<p>And most of the entries in the com.zone are garbage anyway: parked names with ads.<p>Imagine how many different domains the average user will visit in their lifetime. It is but a small fraction of all the names registered.<p>But let's pretend ICANN is relevant.<p>God help us if ICANN should cease to exist.