DNS

The New gTLD Chess Game

On June 20th, the ICANN board voted to move ahead with the new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) program, intended to add hundreds, if not thousands of new names to the DNS root. Now what? Not even the most enthusiastic ICANN supporters think that any new TLDs will be added before the end of 2012, but there are other things going on that greatly complicate the outlook. more

New gTLDs, Last-Minute End-Arounds, and Fundamental Fairness

The ICANN community is ever closer to realization of its goal to bring long-overdue consumer choice and competition to Internet naming. Regrettably, but perhaps predictably, reliance on the Final Applicant Guidebook (AGB) is being challenged at the last minute by recent proposals from the Business and Intellectual Property Constituencies (BC/IPC), which demand "improvements" to the already extensive trademark protections that will be part of the new gTLD landscape. more

gTLDs Opponents Create the Very Confusion They Decry

It's ironic and amusing that while a few well-connected opponents of the new gTLD program were testifying before the U.S. Senate committee, I was asked to help educate top executives of one of the largest global ad agencies and their major clients on the brand marketing and advertising implications of the program. It was clear from the start that virtually all these high-powered executives knew about the program they had learned from the eleventh hour negative campaign. more

A Postitive Look at DENIC’s .Net Bid

The outcome of the .Net rebid process will involve the security, stability and diversity of management of the Internet's critical infrastructure. As well, the rebid process introduces competitive forces that will flow through to users in the form of cost savings and improved service levels. DENIC has submitted a bid that is consistent with the goals and interests of the Internet community and is the only proponent that has done so. Let us consider the following factors and assess the alignment of the bids with the goals and interests for the Internet community. more

ICANN Call for Submissions of Interest for Leadership

ICANN's Nomination Committee has begun their process to nominate more members to various boards, councils and committees of ICANN. This is the process by which I was elected to the board last year. Contrary to what some people may think, these positions should not be taken to try to gain some privilege or power. These are positions of responsibility and require a lot of work for no tangible return except possibly the opportunity to meet other very interesting people. I think about my role at ICANN like I would think about jury duty. We have all benefited from the proper functioning of the Internet for the last decade. If you've benefited in the past and care about the future of the Internet, it is a great opportunity to give back to the community by applying for one of these positions. more

Building a Better WHOIS for the Individual Registrant

Today, anyone can use WHOIS to identify the organization or person who registered a gTLD domain name, along with their postal address, email address, and telephone number. Publishing this data has long been controversial, creating a system riddled with problems. On one hand, anonymous access to all WHOIS data enables misuse by spammers and criminals and raises concerns about personal privacy. On the other hand, incomplete or false WHOIS data prolongs Internet outages and leaves crime victims with little recourse. more

Report on TLD Preference by Country

Which domain extensions do people prefer? How do these preferences vary by country? This article reports the results of a poll of domain extension preference by country of residence conducted from May through October, 2003 by Domain Name Journal and the DomainState forum. Approximately 133 people from 34 different countries participated. This poll has limitations that we will discuss, but it does measure the extension preferences of domain registrants and developers in a manner that has not been done elsewhere and it produces some interesting results. more

Signposts in Cyberspace: An NRC Report on the DNS and Internet Navigation

In light of the recent decision by the United States government to "maintain its historic role in authorizing changes or modifications to the authoritative root zone file" and ICANN's recent decisions to add more gTLDs (including .xxx), and to renew VeriSign as the .net registry, readers may be interested in the just-published report of the National Research Council's Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, Signposts in Cyberspace: The Domain Name System and Internet Navigation. ...a comprehensive policy-oriented examination of the Domain Name System in the broader context of Internet navigation. more

Large-Scale Study by Security Researchers in China Sheds Light on the Scope of DNS Interception

During the 27th Usenix Security Symposium held in Baltimore, MD last week, a group of researchers from China revealed results obtained from a large-scale analysis DNS interceptions. more

Is Whois Data Accuracy Enough?

The Whois Task Force of the Domain Name Supporting Organization (DNSO) has been consulting with registrars over the past few months on the Whois accuracy issue for law enforcement. The Task Force has enumerated three primary areas of interest: accuracy, uniformity, and better searching capabilities. When the registrars met with the Task Force in Shanghai, a fourth area of interest was also brought forward and advocated by many of the registrars at the meeting as paramount to the other three areas. This fourth area of interest was privacy. more

Proceedings of Name Collisions Workshop Available

Keynote speaker, and noted security industry commentator, Bruce Schneier (Co3 Systems ) set the tone for the two days with a discussion on how humans name things and the shortcomings of computers in doing the same. Names require context, he observed, and "computers are really bad at this" because "everything defaults to global." Referring to the potential that new gTLDs could conflict with internal names in installed systems, he commented, "It would be great if we could go back 20 years and say 'Don't do that'," but concluded that policymakers have to work with DNS the way it is today. more

ICANN Dressing Up for New gTLD Party in San Francisco

The ICANN Board met on September 24-25 2010 in Trondheim, Norway, to consider and act on the impediments still in the way of the new generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) program. They passed a number of resolutions that provide very clear indications of how things are going. The short version is that the news is good for new gTLDs. ICANN is nailing down the final outstanding issues and the timetable is clearer than ever. more

IPv6 in Slovak Academic Network

The main reason for developing a new internet protocol was based on lack of address; however this was not the only reason. Unfortunately, many people think of IPv6 only as enormous address space, but there are a lot of other advantages, for example... authorizations and authentication function are implemented directly in the protocol and are mandatory... automatic configuration of network interfaces based on their physical address... protocol itself recognizes data streams which must be transmitted in real time, and the data must be processed with highest priority... more

Facing the Facts on Internet Governance

Having just arrived in Tunis for the WSIS, my weekly Law Bytes column (Toronto Star version, freely available version) focuses on the Internet governance issues that are likely to dominate discussions all week. I argue that claims about a "digital Munich" and a U.N. takeover are not helpful to arriving at an appropriate solution (though based on discussions this morning it does not appear that things are moving very far away from such claims). more

Slowly Cracking the DNSSEC Code at ICANN 43

As regular readers know, ICANN holds lengthy, in-depth discussions devoted to DNSSEC at each of its three annual meetings. The half-day session held at ICANN 43 in Costa Rica last month was particularly interesting. What became clear is that the industry is quickly moving into the end-user adoption phase of global DNSSEC deployment. more