The Internet "crashed" on Thursday

On Thursday, an employee at Network Solutions, a company in Virginia thatruns InteNIC's DNS under an agreement with the U.S. National ScienceFoundation, mistakenly sent corrupted files to the servers around the worldthat handle domain name resolution. As a result, millions of users weredenied Internet access for a couple of hours.

This incident highlights the problems with the current DNS system and givesnew attention to a new DNS system now under consideration.

"We've reached the limit of this old boys' network's ability to function with the world outside," said John Perry Barlow, co-founder and vice chairman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Next week, a self-appointed committee will meet to brainstorm an overhaulto the aging DNS system