In the process of drafting its revised charter (which came about because it is now largely finished with the DNSSEC standard), the IETF's DNS Extensions Working Group (DNSEXT) has identified the Domain Name System as "a critical Internet infrastructure." Given that the DNS handles billions of queries mapping human readable domain names to IP adresses of network hosts daily, it only makes sense that it be considered critical to the function of the Internet. Without the DNS protocol, much of the value of the Internet to humans would not exist.   more »