Re: New TLDs and Registry charters

[Michael Dillon <michael@memra.com>]

On Sat, 7 Dec 1996, Dave Crocker wrote:

> 	Your other point is that we need more iTLDs to "expand" the name
> space.  This is an interesting issue, since of course the .com iTLD name
> space is far larger than is currently used.  In fact, it is large enough to
> be called "infinite" and only have mathematicians object.  What, then, is
> the problem?

Los Angeles has room for the whole population of the United States to live
within its boundaries. This can be proven mathematically. Unfortunately
there are two problems with this. It is just not practical to put 250
million human beings in such a confined area. The disposal of human waste
products including carbon dioxide poses enormous engineering problems. The
second problem is that people do not want to live on the 23rd floor of a
skyscraper crammed into a landscape of nothing but skyscrapers and commute
to work in a car factory on the 16th floor of yet another skyscraper. 

While we could theoretically cram everything into .COM it is not practical
and the general population does not want the compromises it implies. While
I am in favor of deepening the DNS tree I also want to see the tree's
width grow as well to keep some reasonable balance between the two
dimensions. This is why I keep saying that IAHC must create two types of
new iTLD. The traditional one in which SLD's are offered to the public.
And a newer type in which 3LD's are offered to the public with all SLD's
being managed by the delegating registry.

> 	But it only works if we add enough alternatives, relative to the
> demand.  If 100,000 organizations seek to use the string 'acme' and we only
> create 10 itlds, we have not done anything useful to remedy the problem.

acme.restaurants.alt
acme.drycleaners.alt
acme-of.newyork.alt
acme.explosives.alt
acme.fun.alt
acme.klingon.alt
wile.acme.alt
bomb.acme.alt
gross.acme.alt
bob.acme.alt
acme.bob.alt
mr-acme.speaks.alt

Shall I go on? Just one single TLD under this model will probably solve
the problem. But if you review my suggestions on this list you will find
proposals for several other such iTLD's that are more focussed than .ALT.
The idea is to provide a solution that will continue to scale as the
Internet continues to grow exponentially.

Now if you look at the first few acme's above you will note a familiar
pattern used in naming companies. In fact, in British Columbia a
provincially incorporated company normally *MUST* choose a name with two
elements, one indicating the general sort of business the company engages
in and one identifying the specific company. Thus I could not register my
company as Memra Inc. even though Memra is an artificial word like Kodak
or Xerox. I had to use Memra Software Inc. So I think we should add
another iTLD to the list, .ENT.

Here are the rules. .ENT registers 3LD's only. The name given must be the 
company's actual business name and a faxed copy of the letterhead must be
supplied to prove this. The domain name is formed by taking a
classification word out of the name and using it as the SLD and a
unique identifier word to use as the 3LD portion. Thus Chinwags Cafe Ltd.
can have chinwags.cafe.ent and Macdonalds Restaurants Inc. can have
macdonalds.restaurants.ent. IBM Inc. cannot register in .ENT at all and
Macdonalds may not choose macdonalds.fastfood.ent because fastfood is not
in their name. Companies whose name is in a language not known to the
registry should supply a notarized translation of their name into one of
the known languages so that staff can determine which part of the name is
which. The order of the name in the native language is not significant
thus Editions Casterman would get casterman.editions.ent.

If anyone doesn't like the rules, then register in .ALT where there are no
rules except that you pay extra if you are the first in a new SLD.


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