Re: Functional SLDs (was Re: Registration of Common Names)

[werner@axone.ch (Werner Staub)]

Hank, 

> > A company that knows about the Internet will register
> > under .com in order to avoid .co.uk and the like. Moreover,
> > the .com is automatically added by Netscape and other browsers.
> It also adds www at the beginning so you can type just microsoft and
> it will try to go to www.microsoft.com.  Does that mean we should just
> collapse the entire namespace to .COM and forget everything else?

This _is_ a very serious question.  My answer is: a TLD must have
a good reason to be used - not just a rigid set of administrative 
principles.

Btw, to get an idea about how much we must expect from browser software,
check out Martin Duerst's "Internationalization of Domain Names" on
http://www.iahc.org/contrib/draft-duerst-dns-i18n-00.txt

In the case of a domain name representing non-ascii characters, 
the browser can easily guess that the name is part of the 
"internationalisation gTLD" as suggested by Duerst. It does not
even need to show the .i (the proposed code for the 
internationalization TLD).

In other words, we must think of how the browsers will react to 
the new name space. The obviously can only "guess" one solution
(or maybe two if we accept a preference and a DNS time-out). 

Take another possibility: suppose the Netscape or Microsoft 
decided to also substitute hyphens for blanks when no other 
special characters are present. A user who enters "global one"
would then automatically get "www.global-one.com".
How will companies react? Many will then accept long names, like
http://www.bourse-de-paris.com (bad example, seems to be
speculators waiting for bourse-de-paris.fr to wake up). 

> > The basis for the 54,000 3LDs you mentioned is coercion by the
> > TLD registry and and companies' ignorance.
> >
> > Dont forget that the .com namespace is big enough. I never had
> > a problem registering French companies under .com because
> > because few French names are used under .com.
> 
> I would find many who disagree.

An interesting question again. A name has to be short: the shorter 
it is, the more limited the name space. As soon as you use 
functional SLDs, then names have to be even shorter (so as to
be memorable despite the additional characters occupied by the
SLD). Given the fact that the .com is "guessed" by the browser
and most probably by most user, the perceived length of the
name is limited to what stands in fron of .com . Now add hyphens:
we can easily have names with 15 or more characters. 15 to
the power of 25, that makes 2.666E20 possible combinations.

OK, most of these are no sensible words. But the number of
sensible expressions (in multiple languages) is enourmous. I 
guess the fear or running out of space comes from the plain 
telephony where 
 - only digits are allowed
 - the nubmers have to be short
 - short numbers have eliminate the possibility 
   for longer one starting with the same digits.

Regards,

Werner
-- 
Email: werner@axone.ch 
Tel +41 22 8200074 Fax +41 22 8200073
http://www.axone.ch http://Finance.Wat.ch