Key ccTLDs Raise Technical, Political Concerns
Saying it lacks enough information to decide if such domains threaten Internet security, ICANN last week referred a Global Name Registry (GNR) proposal for 2-character .name domains to its Registry Services Technical Evaluation Panel (RSTEP). The decision to make a limited number of names available is being spurred by increased demand for .name domains in Asia, said GNR Pres. Hakon Haugnes. Several large country code top-level domains (ccTLDs) oppose the idea on technical and/or political grounds.
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Two-character names are gaining “more traction” in Asia due in part to GNR’s partnership with Yahoo Japan, Haugnes told us. In a presentation last weekend to ICANN and Asian registrars in Shanghai, Haugnes noted that some 250 million Chinese have 2-character last names. But domains such as li.name and wu.name are blocked, leaving many Internet users unable to obtain their own names. The registry wants to allocate names in the form of Yin@xi.name or Yin.Xi.name.
On Oct. 6, German ccTLD DENIC told ICANN it’s “indeed concerned about the technical side of the issue.” The issue revolves around the 1993 Internet Engineering Task Force Request For Comment (RFC) 1535, addressing a flaw in the way some domain names are resolved. According to Haugnes, the glitch long since has been taken care of by RFC 1535, and GNR no longer considers RFC 1535 relevant. But DENIC Gen. Counsel Stephan Welzel said domains “following the model TLD.TLD (like de.name) cause technical problems as described in the RFC.” In fact, he said, a recent check showed such problems still occur.
U.K. ccTLD Nominet believes the proposal “might have an adverse effect on the stability of the domain name system (DNS),” ICANN said in an Oct. 20 letter to RSTEP. It’s not clear what Nominet’s concerns are and it didn’t immediately comment. Haugnes acknowledged that of 250 or so ccTLDs he’s contacted on the plan, 12, many of them the largest ccTLDs, oppose it. Twelve have given GNR their blessing, and the rest haven’t responded.
Two-character domains are nothing new. They initially were available in .com, .net and many ccTLDs, ICANN said. More recently, ICANN approved limited release of such names for .aero, albeit without thoroughly assessing the technical concerns raised by RFC 1535. Besides the need for such an examination, ICANN told GNR, “as the domain name system marketplace has evolved, other potential stability issues have been identified that could not yet be discounted” -- hence the need for an RSTEP Evaluation.
If RFC 1535 is relevant, “there are already massive TLDs where this would be a serious issue,” Haugnes said. Domains such as li.com, li.net, and co.uk exist. “If one concludes that RFC 1535 leads to instability or security issues related to .name 2-character names, one must also conclude that the Internet today is unstable,” he said. But the issue never has been discussed seriously within ICANN as a stability threat.
If, as GNR believes, there’s no technical security issue with 2-character domains, “it is only right to let people with 2-character names use them on .name,” Haugnes said. In addition to the Chinese, Koreans and Japanese Netizens are also keen to have .name domains, he said.
The proposal has political overtones. The ccTLD managers “are instinctively opposed to 2-characters on any TLD,” believing they create a risk of confusion with ccTLDs (.us or .fr, for example), said Haugnes.
Every registry agreement permits generic TLD registries to reserve certain strings of 2-character domains and to get approval for their release, ICANN said. But they must secure agreement with govts. and ccTLD managers, or the International Standards Organizations 3166 Maintenance Agency, whichever is appropriate. Registries also may ask ICANN to release the reserved names if they have measures in place to avoid confusion with corresponding country codes.
DENIC isn’t “terribly interested in the political implications,” Welzel told ICANN. But GNR’s own registry agreement requires it to reach agreement with govts. as well as ccTLDs “yet they act as if only the ccTLD managers’ consent counted,” he said. The Governmental Advisory Committee didn’t comment by our deadline.
The RSTEP has until Dec. 4 to predict the effect of GNR’s proposal on DNS stability and security. Haugnes is confident the panel will find RFC 1535 irrelevant. If it doesn’t, ICANN will have on its hands a “huge security issue that probably needs to be addressed,” he said.