By Nick Patience
The battles over the domain name system this year could result in more than one company making money. Up until now Network Solutions Inc, whose stock has finally got itself hitched itself to the internet stock frenzy bandwagon over the past two months, has had the monopoly in two key areas. It is both the exclusive registry for the three most popular top-level domains (TLDs): .com, .net, and .org, through which it maintains the database for all addresses ending with those letters, but it is also the exclusive registrar, which means that even if you go through your ISP or one of the firm’s 150 or so resellers around the world, NSI always gets a stake of the registration fee. By mid-summer, NSI will start facing competition in the registrar business with five companies initially competing to register domains and more later in the year. The five companies will be chosen by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). But a potentially much more lucrative business will be the registry business, where you offer the chance to registrars to register domains in .com and possible new TLDs. The problem is getting the TLD accepted into the internet’s root server system, which is currently controlled by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, whose role will be subsumed into ICANN later this year. The IANA used to mean one man, Jon Postel, who ultimately decided which, if any new TLDs were to be added, and none have been for more than 10 years. But he died suddenly last October and all talk of new TLDs has largely been put on hold until ICANN gets itself straightened out. It has a memorandum of understanding from the US Department of Commerce to begin the transition to eventual control of the entire internet addressing infrastructure. According to ICANN interim chairman, Esther Dyson, the earliest possible time any new TLDs can be approved would be the end of May, when ICANN has scheduled a board meeting. But she admits that that would mean things moving incredibly fast, and although this is the core of the internet, moving in so-called internet time doesn’t really apply to the DNS, where politicking eats up months of everybody’s valuable time. Once the new name or names are approved, the registries have to be chosen, which is the thorniest question of all. Other things also need to be resolved, such as whether it should be one name per registry, or whether the names should be shared among multiple registries operating with a shared database. The ICANN board will effectively hand these companies a multi-million dollar business from scratch, depending on the popularity of the name or names they control. Most watchers, including this one, do not think that any new TLDs are likely to be added to the root server until at least the last quarter of this year, and more likely not until 2000. The decision about which ones to add and when will ultimately be that of the domain name supporting organization (DNSO) of ICANN, which will make recommendations to the ICANN board that will then most likely ratify them. The battle to become the DNSO is another story entirely. IANA now defers all questions of when new TLDs will be added to the prospective DNSO, which doesn’t exist yet. One company that has been waiting longer than most for a piece of the pie is Image Online Design. It was started, as the name suggests as a web design company in early 1995. One of the founders, Christopher Ambler was about to send a $3,000 check off to the InterNic – run on the government’s behalf by NSI – to register domains for customers and thought sure he could do it himself for less. Ambler and fellow co-founder John Frangie decided upon .web as a likely TLD that could serve as the core of a viable business. So Ambler called IANA and asked if he could run a registry and they told him to get in line, as plenty of others had already got the same idea. Eventually on July 31 1996, Ambler and a couple of others secured a meeting with Jon Postel at IANA’s headquarters at the University of Southern California at Marina Del Ray – only Postel wasn’t there and IANA’s Bill Manning attended the meeting on his behalf. Ambler asked Manning if IOD was first in line for .web and if it was the only company to request it, to which he replied yes both times – the point being that TLDs under a draft plan drawn up earlier that year by Postel, which was still to be finalized, were to be issued on a first come first served basis to anyone with a secure registry software, which Ambler and Frangie had produced by March that year and were ready to go live with immediately. So Ambler asked if he could write a check for the $1,000 application fee that IANA required as set out in its draft document, which was expected to get the full status of a Request for Comments (RFC) within a matter of weeks. Manning left the room and returned with an envelope, telling Ambler to put everything he wished to include with his application in the envelope, which he did and then sealed the envelope and gave it to Manning. The envelope was returned to Ambler about a week later with no explanation and Ambler still has the sealed envelope today. Ambler also asked Manning if he could go live with .web, Manning again left the room and returned to tell him he could and assured him that .web would eventually get into the root. That’s Ambler’s account of the meeting and others have alleged that Ambler slipped the check into the application while Manning was outside the room, which he vigorously denies. Manning did not want to talk about the matter without legal counsel present. Postel’s draft document was eventually published as an RFC in the fall and advocated the establishment of a group of an International Ad-Hoc Committee (IAHC) to start the whole process form scratch in cooperation with the Internet Society (ISOC). The IAHC was announced in late October 1996 (10/28/96). In February 1997 the IAHC proposed introducing seven new TLDs and 28 registrars. It proposed a lottery for applications for administering new TLDs, but that part was eventually dropped the following year. Among the seven new TLDs the IAHC proposed to create was .web. IOD, which had initially cooperated with the IAHC, exited at this point and when the IAHC published its memorandum of understanding to recruit supporters and new registrars, IOD filed suit to try to prevent any registrars being signed up until the whole mess was sorted out. But the judge disagreed and threw out the request for a restraining order on the IAHC because he did not think IOD was going to win, nor did the judge feel that IOD had protectable proprietary interest in the term [.web]. IOD dropped the case and has continued to take registrations ever since but with a very clear disclaimer that there can never be any guarantee that the names will get into the root. The second version of its registry software includes value-added features that Ambler, who now no longer works at the company but still maintains a significant shareholding, does not want to disclose for fear of competitors copying the ideas. The third version is a shared registry system that would enable many different companies to act as registrars. IOD is holding back on going live with that that too, until the specifications NSI has drawn up for shared registry systems are published. Ambler says IOD has been ready for more than two years now. Whether or not it ever gets a chance to start introducing names into the .web top-level domain is largely in the hands of the would-be DNSO, and some of the old IAHC folks have been well-represented at the public meetings held by the group that appears to be ahead of others in trying to establish itself as the eventual DNSO (12/23/98). IOD is involved with rival groups and applications have to be with ICANN by February 5. After almost three years, the same battles are being fought among the same people for the same prize. Only this time, hopefully they will be slightly more open to scrutiny.
