Re: Conflict resolution?

[Michael Dillon <michael@memra.com>]

On Wed, 20 Nov 1996, Simon Higgs wrote:

> > IANA did not accept applications for iTLD registries.
> 
> Nice fantasy. Wrong answer. At least 2 new TLDs (for Jersey & Guernsey)
> have been processed and placed into the root since the original newdom
> list started.

Perhaps definitions are in order...

TLD - Top Level Domain. This is the righmost suffix found on Internet
      domain names, i.e. .COM, .UK and so on. 

iTLD - International TLD. This is a TLD that is open to domain name
       registrations from any country. Currently this list includes
       .COM, .ORG, .NET, .EDU and .INT. Note that .EDU is restricted to 
       degree granting institutions and .INT is managed by the ITU
       committee T-666. 

ISO 3166 TLD - these are the two letter TLD's that are delegated to the
               control of a national organization in each individual 
               country. After the initial delegation they are no
               longer subject to the control of IANA or the international
               Internet community. The name refers to the two character
               ISO 3166 country codes, as used by the International
               Postal Union, that form these TLD's.

legacy TLD - there are two legacy TLD's, .MIL and .GOV that are delegated
             to the control of the US government and UD DOD due to
             the history of the Internet.

.ARPA - This TLD was historically used by the US DOD's ARPA project and
        is now only used for the in-addr.arpa database which provides
        reverse DNS lookups to translate an IP address into an FQDN
        (Fully Qualified Domain Name).

Thus Jersey and Guernsey recieved ISO 3166 TLD's, not iTLD's.

> > Many people on the
> > newdom list wanted to know what they could do before the iTLD plans were
> > finalized and Bill Manning suggested that they could fill out an Internic
> > application for for an iTLD in order to get a publicly recognized
> > timestamp on it and forward that timestamped rejection notice to IANA.
> > However it was always quite clear that this did *NOT* constitute an
> > application for an iTLD registry according to the Postel draft for several
> > reasons.
> >
> 
> IANA gave out specific instructions for TLD applicants.  There was no
> draft-postel back then. There wasn't even the draft-ybmk (sp?)
> predecessor.

I'll have to check some mail archives before commenting on that. I do
recall submitting both the Internic timestamp and a preliminary
application based on the drafts but I can't recall the sequence or the
dates right now.


Michael Dillon                   -               ISP & Internet Consulting
Memra Software Inc.              -                  Fax: +1-604-546-3049
http://www.memra.com             -               E-mail: michael@memra.com