As discussed in the several studies on name collisions published to date, determining which queries are at risk, and thus how to mitigate the risk, requires qualitative analysis. Blocking a second level domain (SLD) simply on the basis that it was queried for in a past sample set runs a significant risk of false positives. SLDs that could have been delegated safely may be excluded on quantitative evidence alone, limiting the value of the new gTLD until the status of the SLD can be proven otherwise. more
Will new gTLDs just be more of the same, or will they bring real diversity and innovation to the Internet's namespace? For Hong Kong based Stable Tone, applicant for two Chinese character IDN TLDs (?? or "Dot WORLD" and ?? or "Dot HEALTHY"), it's the smaller applicants that give the new gTLD program its soul. more
The Applicant Auction team is heading to ICANN 48 in Buenos Aires this month, and as we start to pack our bags, we thought it was time to share some updates with the community. Last week, ICANN held a webinar to present Auction Rules for its forthcoming Last Resort Auctions. more
This past week brought word that the first nine Latin / ASCII "new Generic Top Level Domains (newgTLDs)" were delegated by ICANN and are now found in the root of DNS. This means that the registries behind these newgTLDS can now start the process of making "second-level domains" (the ones we normally register) available in each of these TLDs. more
For several years, DNS-OARC has been collecting DNS query data "from busy and interesting DNS name servers" as part of an annual "Day-in-the-Life" (DITL) effort (an effort originated by CAIDA in 2002) that I discussed in the first blog post in this series. DNS-OARC currently offers eight such data sets, covering the queries to many but not all of the 13 DNS root servers (and some non-root data) over a two-day period or longer each year from 2006 to present. more
The Latin America and Caribbean Domain Name System (LAC DNS) Forum will be held on November 15, 2013 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. This follows on a similar initiative that took place at ICANN 47 in Durban, South Africa. The event's global, regional and local organizers plan to address key online issues, including more regional involvement with Internet governance. more
Many who attended the ICANN Durban meeting this summer will recall the open forum were speakers lined up to call on ICANN to either speed up or slow down the new gTLDs depending on their position or interest. I chose to address a different topic that no one was yet willing to tackle publicly. It was PRISM and the NSA surveillance scandals. In my intervention I was also the first to also publicly warn ICANN and Fadi Chehade directly that "Trust" in ICANN and Multistakeholderism face serious perils from the Snowden revelations... more
As widely discussed recently, observed within the ICANN community several years ago, and anticipated in the broader technical community even earlier, the introduction of a new generic top-level domain (gTLD) at the global DNS root could result in name collisions with previously installed systems. Such systems sometimes send queries to the global DNS with domain name suffixes that, under reasonable assumptions at the time the systems were designed, may not have been expected to be delegated as gTLDs. more
Six months following the April 11th issuance of the Beijing Communique by ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC), ICANN continues to wrestle with whether to accept the bulk of the GAC's proposed safeguards for new gTLDs as set forth in Annex 1 of that document. On October 1st ICANN Board Chairman Stephen Crocket sent a letter to GAC Chair Heather Dryden summarizing the results of the September 28th meeting of the New gTLD Program Committee (NGPC) that considered the remaining and still undecided advice received from the GAC. more
John Crain has been named ICANN's new Chief Security, Stability and Resiliency Officer. In this newly created position Crain will assume the responsibilities of Jeff Moss, who announced he is stepping down from his position as Chief Security Officer at the end of the year. more
The Internet Governance Forum in Bali is not without excitement as usual. There is a rumour about a power grab by the technical community. If the "power grab" is true, then I am assuming that this is a response to threats of institutional frameworks governing or interfering with the current status quo. Personally, I feel that this is anti thesis to "enhanced cooperation". If for some reason, ICANN or the US Government is behind the scenes in instigating this move, then I would suggest that it is very bad strategy and will cause more damage than harm to the current status quo. more
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) today announced that the first new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) from its New gTLD Program were delegated. This means they were introduced into the Internet's Root Zone, the central authoritative database for the Internet's Domain Name System. more
Given the post-Prism political climate, it should come as no surprise that the 8th edition of the UN-initiated Internet Governance Forum (IGF), currently happening in Bali (Indonesia), is showing record-braking attendance with more than 2,000 delegates. With a byline of "building bridges: enhancing multistakeholder cooperation for growth and sustainable development", the meeting's main theme is clearly the need to evolve the current model for Internet Governance. But not quite everyone has the same view on exactly how that should happen. more
Kevin Murphy reporting in Domain Incite: "ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade and a US ambassador today both talked up the multistakeholder model as a cure to concerns about PRISM and related surveillance programs. But the US warned against using the spying scandal to push internet governance into the hands of 'centralized intergovernmental control'... Chehade and Ambassador Danny Sepulveda, US coordinator for international communications and information policy, were speaking at the opening ceremony of the Internet Governance Forum in Bali, Indonesia." more
ICANN has announced a list of over 40 diverse practitioners, subject matter experts, and thought leaders as members of the ICANN Strategy Panels to support development of the organization's strategic and operational plans. more
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