[comments-gtlds] An IPv16 View

["Jim Fleming" <jfleming@anet.com>]

In my opinion people need to recognize that the various
Internet namespaces are going to expand and become
more diverse as more and more non-technical and
non-academic people become wired. Several years ago
the DNS community had a chance to "do the right thing".
Unfortunately, the DNS became a place where control
freaks settled to block any form of expansion that did not
meet the agenda set by their narrow-minded societies.
The world has now routed around these people.

No...a large number of TLDs have not been "created". The
control freaks killed that. No...alternative roots did not take
hold, the various government agencies helped to kill that.
Don't worry, nothing much has changed since 1995. In fact,
the ccTLDs have not even attracted much expansion. The
consumers have largely been herded into the .COM zone.

Fortunately, consumers have spoken by quickly adapting to
the dash-centric world and ignoring the dot-centric options.
This should not be surprising given the fact that control freaks
stood in their way with dot expansion while almost no one
commented about their dash expansions. Yes....while the
control freaks were guarding the dots, the consumers were
freely using the dashes. If they found NAME.COM to be
taken, they selected 800-NAME.COM. If that was taken they
freely created 1-800-NAME.COM. If that was taken they used
every other -extension or extension- they could think of. The
dash is now clearly the dominant separator for the free world.

In my opinion there is no sense in continuing to debate with
the dot-centric control freaks. It is far easier and more profitable
to go with the pace set by consumers in the free market. In order
to do that I suggest that we recommend that the .COM zone be
used by anyone interested in securing their name in cyberspace.
Existing domains can be mapped or registered into the .COM
zone by replacing the right-most dot with a dash and appending
.COM. This will allow consumers to have an unlimited number
of choices of "dLDs". NAME-COM.COM will be the obvious one
to protect for anyone with a simple NAME.COM.

The bad news in this approach for so-called ccTLDs is that all
of their names could end up under .COM with a form such as:
NAME-ccTLD.COM 

The good news for ccTLDs is that ALL of the 5+ million .COM
names will then become available to be RE-REGISTERED in the
existing ccTLD. In other words, NAME-COM.COM will become
NAME-COM.ccTLD when registered in a "foreign country". If
the country charge $100 per year for such a registration, then
they could pull in $500,000,000 million per year in revenue from
the .COM owners who are now growing at a rapid rate as the
ICANN registrars continue to expand that space.

In summary, no new TLDs will be needed in this scheme. In
my opinion, the opportunity to add new TLDs was lost in the
summer of 1996 when the ISOC Board of Directors instructed
Jon Postel to go make a business plan for the TLD expansion
that people were demanding after the 1995 charging started in
the .COM zone. That plan was never created and instead, the
IAHC stepped in to derail any chance of expanding the TLDs.
Then, the U.S. Government stepped in to help derail any hope
of a chance and now ICANN has clearly been formed to ensure
that happens with their FIRST priority being to expand registrars
where there were already thousands of registrars called ISPs.

All of this focus on the dot has expanded the usage of the dash.
I think that we should move forward with that and end the debates
which do little more than waste good people's time and generate
legal fees.

I suggest that people take the following steps:

1. Modify any domain name by changing the right-most DOT
to a DASH. Example: NAME.COM ===> NAME-COM

2. Add a .COM extension to the new name to "commercialize" it.
Example: NAME-COM.COM

3. Register this new name in the .COM zone to ensure protection
of one's name.

4. Seek similar registrations for the -COM name in other existing
TLDs. Example: NAME-COM.uk for a UK presence of the company
subject to UK laws.

5. Expand -tlds (dLDs) with the 2,048 IPv8 suggestions shown here...
http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/domainname/130dftmail/unir.txt

6. Continue to survey the .COM name space to determine the top
2,048 dLDS based on consumer demand to maintain this list based
on the contents of the 5 million+ name .COM zone which can easily
be obtained from NSI @ at http://www.netsol.com/tldzone 


Jim Fleming

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