DNS

Large Group Formed to Oppose ICANN’s New gTLD Expansion

Eighty-seven major national and international business associations and companies have joined forces with the ANA (Association of National Advertisers), forming the Coalition for Responsible Internet Domain Oversight (CRIDO) to oppose the rollout of ICANN's top-level domain expansion program. more

New gTLDs and the 1%

While Occupy Wall Street and other groups representing the so-called 99% are getting most of the press, the 1% is raising its profile as well, at least when it comes to gTLDs. They are complaining that introducing global choice and competition to the Internet will cost them money. The chief of the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) now says that it has "spent the last few months" considering the new gTLD program, and has found it lacking. They want ICANN to shut the whole thing down. more

European Commission in Favour of New IANA Contract - Disapproves of US Only Bidding Process

In a move that shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, the EU Commission has given a rather mixed welcome to the IANA bid. While they obviously like a lot of what they are seeing, they're also not overly impressed with the contract only being open to US companies. more

New TLD Spotted - .FUD

In politics, as in Internet policy, the most effective weapons are also the oldest. So when it came time for hard-line intellectual property advocates to make a desperate last stand against the new gTLD program, it came as no surprise they turned to the atomic bomb of rhetorical devices: FUD. FUD stands for "fear, uncertainty and doubt" and it is the tool of last resort when change is coming and you want to stop it. The theory is simple: the human response to fear is to cling to what's familiar and oppose what's new. So if you can scare enough people about the potential effects of a new policy or law, you stand a pretty good chance of preventing it from ever going into effect. more

Is Africa Ready for a dotAfrica gTLD Future?

It's approximately 2 months to go before the grand application process for the new gTLDs begins, ICANN the international internet body made a revolutionary announcement in June that is going to change the entire internet namespace. With the current 21 gTLDs, the world is bracing for a surge of close to 500 new applications. Among the domains of my interest is the .Africa gTLD. more

What Will Be the Magic Number for New gTLD Applications?

With the application launch period scheduled to begin in less than three months, everyone wants to know just how many new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) applications will be submitted. In terms of the number of applications to be submitted, I've seen estimates putting the figure as low as 500. But just last week, an industry insider told me that he thought the number could go as high as 3,500. more

The Introduction of New Domain Name Services: “Due Process” and Innovation

For those interested in encouraging innovation in the domain name space -- which presumably includes the ICANN community currently convening in Dakar -- the recent episode in which VeriSign proposed, and then quickly withdrew, a bundle of new services (the VeriSign anti-abuse domain use policy) raises important issues that will be revisited as new gTLDs are introduced. Some of those issues are referenced in a recent blog post by Milton Mueller, but his emphasis on "due process" suggests a regulatory framework that is not friendly to innovation. more

A Month in Africa Charts the Promise and Perils of Internet Governance

There may be no better illustration of how far we've come in Internet governance, than this: twice in the past 30 days, the global Internet community has gathered in sub-Saharan Africa to plot a path to bring the Internet to its next billion users. Just weeks after wrapping up the sixth annual Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Kenya, Internet stakeholders from around the world traveled back to Africa for ICANN's 42nd meeting in Dakar, Senegal. more

Why Brands Need Their Own TLD - The Mulberry-Sale Site that Scammed Me

As a seasoned internet user, even an old 'Domainer', I was there when ICANN launched the first round of New TLDs. I remember the criticism we received from the media back then. We were invited to countless roundtable discussions, press conferences, and local internet events at which we were expected to answer the key media question: "Why are new TLDs necessary?" Dot BIZ, .INFO, and four more were the test bed new TLDs -- I represented .BIZ in EMEA. more

New TLD Applicants: Read This Before Selecting a Registry Provider

As each day passes, I spend more time immersing myself with prospective clients who are weighing up our offering over those of alternative providers. The more I become entrenched in this competitive process, the more it becomes increasingly clear that many of the competing RSPs pitching their wares to hopeful applicants are misleading them by hiding critically important information in fine print disclaimers or feeding them rubbish in order to whittle down the competition. Competition is a great thing; it just needs to be on the same playing field. Make sure you are comparing apples with apples. more

Bringing Order to The World’s Cybrary: New TLDs Make Sense to Organize the Chaos of the Internet

There has been considerable debate on whether the Internet needs new Top Level Domains. Advertising advocacy groups have objected to the expense of re-investment in online branding. There's a lot of work involved in telling the world .BEYONCE is where you will now find all official Beyonce related information. I'm wondering, why would anyone object to some order being applied to the internet? more

Protecting Intellectual Property is Good; Mandatory DNS Filtering is Bad

It has been about six months since I got together with four of my friends from the DNS world and we co-authored a white paper which explains the technical problems with mandated DNS filtering. The legislation we were responding to was S. 968, also called the PROTECT-IP act, which was introduced this year in the U. S. Senate. By all accounts we can expect a similar U. S. House of Representatives bill soon, so we've written a letter to both the House and Senate, renewing and updating our concerns. more

The Human Factor in DDoS Attacks

Ripped from the headlines: A recent DDoS attack lasted an entire 60 days. In other news, a single site was attacked 218 times in Q2 alone. To those of us in the business of protecting Web infrastructure, these stories are hardly surprising. What's notable, though, is where they were reported, in The Financial, whose focus is banking and financial services, not technology. The reporters used the term "DDoS" as if it were as common as "hedge fund," something everyday business people, not just techies, grasp. It's this human element that caught my interest and got me thinking a little. more

Making Internet Faster: Google, OpenDNS and Others Announce Joint Effort

Google, OpenDNS, content delivery networks and other operators have announced a joint effort called "The Global Internet Speedup," to "make the Internet faster". According to the group, this collaboration will be executed via an open IETF proposed standard called "edns-client-subnet" in order to help better direct content to users thereby decreasing latency, decreasing congestion, increasing transfer speeds and helping the Internet to scale faster and further. more

The Design of the Domain Name System, Part VIII - Names Outside the DNS

In previous installments we've been looking at aspects of the design of the DNS. In today's grand finale we look at the the subtle but very knotty issue of names inside and outside the DNS. In the early years of the DNS, domain names were typically resolved to A records which were used to identify a host running a service. With the notable exception of e-mail, once the host was identified, the name no longer mattered. more