ICANN

New gTLD Queries at the Root & Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle

Since Verisign published its second SSR report a few weeks back, recently updated with revision 1.1, we've been taking a deeper look at queries to the root servers that elicit "Name Error," or NXDomain responses and figured we'd share some preliminary results. Not surprisingly, promptly after publication of the Interisle Consulting Group's Name Collision in the DNS [PDF] report, a small number of the many who are impacted are aiming to discredit the report.

ICANN Must Now Decide String Similarity Question

Yesterday, a decision on a string confusion objection was reached by a dispute resolution provider that resulted in a scenario that ICANN and the Applicant Guidebook had not addressed - conflicting opinions have been rendered by expert panelists ruling on the exact same pair of strings. One of our applications now hangs in the balance. The expert panelist for the International Centre for Dispute Resolution (ICDR) assigned to decide the string confusion objection filed by VeriSign against United TLD's .CAM application, issued a decision sustaining VeriSign's objection that .CAM and .COM are confusingly similar.

New gTLDs: If I Knew Then, What I Know Now…

If only I had been able to predict the new gTLD future, but alas my crystal ball (well, really it's a Magic 8 Ball ®) did little to help me. And I really doubt that 5+ years ago, when this new gTLD journey began, that anyone could have predicted where we are now. All that said, back in 2008, I wish I could have known that...

ICANN Bans Dotless Domains

Any new top level domain approved for the Internet will have to be more than just a single label. ICANN's new gTLD program committee (NGPC) has decided to ban the use of "dotless domains". TLD operators that had planned to use their new suffix as a keyword, i.e. just the string and nothing else, will now have to reconsider.

Panels Rule No Confusion Exists Between Singular and Plural New gTLD Strings

If early International Centre for Dispute Resolution decisions are anything to go by, as far as dispute resolution panellists are concerned, singular and plural versions of the same string do not risk causing user confusion. Tasked with handling string confusion objections under the new gTLD program, the ICDR has just rejected an objection by Google against Donuts' application for .CARS. Google has applied for .CAR.

A Look at Closed vs. Open New gTLDs

The essay analyzes some of the strengths and weaknesses of closed and open new gTLDs. The success of the gTLD to a large degree rests on the successful design and implementation of an effective digital business model. A closed gTLD is one whose owner uses it for exclusive content - for example, the use of .book exclusively for Amazon books. Conversely, if Amazon opens up .book, other book sellers and libraries would be able to set up sub-domains, sites where they controlled content.

What’s Up With WEIRDS?

The IETF WEIRDS working group is defining a follow-on to WHOIS. Since this is the IETF, it's working on the technical issues about which it can deal with, not policy which is up to ICANN and the country registries. Somewhat to my surprise, the group is making steady progress. We've agreed that the basic model is RESTful, with queries via http, and responses as JSON data structures. The protocol is named RDAP for Registration Data Access Protocol, or maybe RESTful Data Access protocol.

New gTLD SSR-2: Exploratory Consumer Impact Analysis (Part 5 of 5)

Throughout this series of blog posts we've discussed a number of issues related to security, stability, and resilience of the DNS ecosystem, particularly as we approach the rollout of new gTLDs. Additionally, we highlighted a number of issues that we believe are outstanding and need to be resolved before the safe introduction of new gTLDs can occur - and we tried to provide some context as to why, all the while continuously highlighting that nearly all of these unresolved recommendations came from parties in addition to Verisign over the last several years.

The Long Gestation and Afterlife of New gTLDs

ICANN continues to flail, pointlessly. The latest in a series of missteps that could easily have been avoided is its recommendations on what to do about a report on the potential for confusion and misaddressing when someone's internal network names match the name for a new gTLD, and they have misconfigured their routers and/or DNS to the extent that someone typing in a new gTLD name might end up in the middle of someone else's network.

ICANN 47: Policy Debates and Cautious Optimism

A strange feeling came over me after I got home from ICANN 47 in Durban, something I haven't felt after an ICANN meeting before. The feeling? Optimism. I'm optimistic, albeit cautiously so, about the future of ICANN and by extension, hopefully that of Internet governance in general. If the meeting in Durban is any indication, we've come a long way in the past year. There were no indicted war criminals invited to dinner. And though it may be too soon to say for sure, I don't think a letter will be sent to the government of South Africa about the quality of the hotel.