this is a *&$% up, a major *&$% up.

Its a bit vague isn't it?

have several ideas for TLDs but cant afford £50 grand a pop

This is about as useless a make your own curry dish, eh? I'll take the vindaloo with some sake please, yeah. Some coconut in my curry paste, please, yeah?

I don't pretend to be more than an idle reader on the subject, but I've been of the understanding that the available number of IP addresses under IPv4 are due to be exhausted in the foreseeable future. Additional TLDs would probably hasten that don't you think? On the conspiracy side, maybe this is intentional to push people to adopt IPv6? Any opinions?

Does Russia REALLY need a non-ascii TLD, and right away? Isn't this something that can be handled in the application layer? How about setting up DNS resolvers in Russia to resolve *.PO (the Cyrillic first letters of Russia) to .po.ru? Seems a lot simpler to me. This will turn into a phishing minefield as ascii-like Cyrillic letters will be used. Don't get me started on the issues of filtering Chinese characters. I have no idea how to input one, or even how to look one up.

For what it's worth, my country doesn't use letters that even look like Latin, and we do okay with our ascii TLD.

Whilst bored at work a couple of us were being juvenile by testing what domains are available. Naturally domains such as bastard.com and twat.com were all taken.

Eventually we got down to scraping the barrel.

Shockingly peado.com was taken! However, all tld variations of peadophile were available. We contemplated the finer humour of registering the domain peado.net (which was available) and setting up email address with our friends (or enemies) names.

Can you imagine the hilarity that would ensue from sending an email to a mutual friend from @peado.net. Finally common sense prevailed and we realised that if we tried to register the domain we could expect a knock at the door several hours later and a trip down to the station for some akward questioning.

Now imagine the fun you can have with these TLD's. I want to register Gordon-Brown.Twat

So soon there will be emails like this

Urgent Security Notificaton!

Click here to update our records

http://www.security-update.nationalban

Mines the one with http://not-the.register in the pocket

You probably found that all TLD variations of peadophile were available, because the word is actually spelled paedophile, all main TLDs are taken....

exe!

I can start my own online word processor at word.exe, my own online spreadsheet at excel.exe...

Your entire premise revolves around a spelling mistake? Nice work.

Unrestricted top-level domains will force big companies to rush for their own domains, having already been forced to grab .com, .biz, .net and .god knows what else versions of their domains so that no-one can impersonate them. You can see .ibm, .gm, .chrysler, .bt, .consignia, .ici, .nokia and all coming on fast. If they don't....they might wind up having to go cap in hand to somebody in China to redeem their names.

Great. Let's segregate the existing TLDs by making some of them untypeable. Do you think making .cn equal some pictographic character would raise or lower the amount of extranational internet traffic in China?

Second great idea, let's make it possible to use any string you want as a TLD as long as you can afford to drop a year's wages on it.

Perhaps ICANN can come up with a list of strings that more than one person might conceivably want as a TLD and then auction them off.

I predict ICANN's only future budgetary problem will be coming up with ways to spend the money fast enough.

Not necessarily. The non-ASCII DNS lookups would more than likely simply match up to their extensive ASCII counterparts for the time being. As noted, a comprehensive plan of action concerning non-ASCII domains in general will probably take a more gradual approach--perhaps long enough to formulate a proper solution.

No really can I?

Finally has a chance.

Of course, now there's nothing forcing porno sites to go there, and they might as well just do .sex

icann.is.stupid

Yeah, that's the ticket. Register "stupid" as a top level domain. Then we can put all these silly suggestions there.

Note to self: remember to register .smart as well, just to be safe!

p.s. What are the rules for registering? First come, first served? If so, everyone will need to hurry!

no - I don't think so.

I think you'll find that the ratio of names : adresses is already quite high. It'll just get a bit higher now

Andy

Six figures!?

For the little man who wants to register himself a neat site, this is utterly useless. Way to give the multibillion dollar corporations a leg up.

Won't we all just be so jealous when we get to click links like shop.bestbuy or savings.target, knowing we can never have one for ourselves?

This seems rather like a solution looking for a problem. Is the demand for gTLD space really that great? I can see lots and lots of problems coming from this too. I have a horrible feeling this will be a boon for criminals...

@Nomedias - although usually a DNS lookup will [usually] be looking for an IPV4 address, the number of domains of any stripe has no bearing upon how rapidly the IPV4 address range will be exhausted. A domain does necessarily require an IP address or vice versa. The DNS root servers were altered to allow lookups in the IPV6 address space some time ago now, so the changeover is in-hand.

Exactly, doesn't this drop the value of all current TLDs to about 1% above nothing.

On a grander scale perhaps they hope to replicate the cattle market of domain profiteering to all these custom TLDs.

On the other hand an full UTF8 internet should be something we are aiming for where we step beyond ASCII.... failing that we could just agree (as with shipping and airtravel) that English is best cos we once had an empire so there, lets all use English (read ASCII).

"low six figures in American dollars"

So minimum price for a domain is $100,000 / £50,000.

Just exactly who is this supposed to benefit, other than the usual fat corporations?

Obviously an attempt o build a namespace landgrab bubble. I assume the revenues will accrue to the same org that creates the bubble - ICANN?

There is no good reason for the price to be so high.

Perhaps there is a Bush or Cheney involved in this behind the scenes?

However, don't think of it as adding lots of new TLDs.

Instead, think of it as knocking the last field (the current TLD) off the end of the address (i.e. dropping the .com or .uk or whatever). Then it doesn't seem so bad. The last field carries little information and many sites register as many of them as possible (me.com, me.net, me.info, me.co.uk, etc.) so why not just drop the last field?

In effect, that's where we're all heading. Not such a bad idea IMHO.

This is going to be a nightmare for corporates who want to protect their brand name. For instance, Cisco have registered in just about every TLD going, but if new TLD's are popping up all over the place they will have to be extremely vigilant so that some miscreant doesn't appropriate their brand name for their own nefarious uses.

Multiply this by the number of large corporates who will want to protect their brand name and you have a huge money making opportunity here.

Do we really need this? I dunno, I reckon the amount of phishing going on will increase dramatically, especially when you combine IDN's with it all too. It's going to get in a right old mess.

I'd like to register .conn - I'd sell it to phishing sites,since its best to have them all under one TLD.

Wait, it looks like .com? Shoot. How did that happen?

Domain Names and IP Addresses do not have a 1:1 relationship. Domain Names are aliases for IP addresses. I personally (as a private individual) "own" 4 "*.com" Domain Names (which currently represents 8 actual Domain Names, ie sites), all of which point to the same server/IP address.

So, for example, I "purchased" aaa.com, bbb.com, ccc.com and ddd.com. From these, I generated eee.aaa.com, fff.bbb.com, ggg.ccc.com and hhh.ddd.com for a total of 8 Domain names pointing to websites, all of which are DNSed to 192.168.12.3, my web server. (don't try that address, it's invalid outside of your local network)

"own" and "purchased" are in quotes because no-one actually owns any Domain names, they (simplification ahead) just rent them from ICANN via Registrars. Of course, with the "automatic renewal" option available from most Registrars these days, you essentially are renting them forever. Just remember that this is not a one-off fee, but something you will have to pay each year.

I hope the above made sense.

Domain names are officially dead, as of TODAY.

The person who brings me the next big way to access websites will be given a beer.. :)

Mr Icann Wank*rs

are actually a good idea because it limits the number of TLDs taken.

Could we really cope with all domain names being a TLD? It would break the DNS hierarchy which provides the throughput required and it allows mycompany.co.uk to be sensibly different from mycompany.de. If everyone wanted ".mycompany" as a TLD the namespace would have effectively shrunk, since no-one would want the hierarchical domains. It would be the same problem as .com currently has.

I suspect the prices also exclude spammers who would have to fork out so much for .natwest and .halifax.

Ah yes and .corn is a much better phishing TDL than .conn. Maybe even enough commercial potential there to justify getting it...

Just get it before the pirates do,,. oo-argh, to late me hearties!

I'm suprised no one has mentioned '.nospam', imagine the goodies delivering themselves to your inbox!

People seem to be missing the point, other than for a few big companies (such as ibm, cisco etc) ICANN aren't expecting or wanting consumers to be buying their own Top level domain name, they are expecting registras to buy them and then resell them. The domain name isn't any use to you if you also don't have the domain name servers to host them in a reliable manner. The higher the price the better as it limits the number of top level domains and the impact they have on the infrastructure.

Why would you wanna point your domains to my internal webserver?

In a chaotic world of multiple domains I can't help but think that search will become ever more important. Google, your days are very far from numbered.

The following won't be much of a problem

buy.viagra

buy.v1agra

buy.vlagra

but.vi4gra

but maybe these will

MCDONALDS.COM != MCDONALDS.C0M

NATWEST.CO.UK != NATWEST.C0.UK

natwest.co.uk != nâtwest.co.uk

I think take up of a these new format domains will be slow if only

because a huge amount of filtering software -esp. for email will

simply block based on rules for what is acceptable to that provider.

Are you ready for http://starbucks/?

Let's hope you don't have a computer on your home or company network called "starbucks" -or any other new top level domain :)

Of the people I know, about 2/3rds of them will take at least a year if not five to get used to the idea of a domain not ending in .com, .uk, .org, .net et, the ones they know.

The logs are going to see so many http://www.mysite.iscool.com requests.....

...because the TLD-purchasers will be able to sell subdomains off. So if someone wants to become the registrar for ".cars", ".autos" and ".motors", they'll need a business plan for how they're going to service the demand from car showrooms for "joes.motors" "yourused.autos" and the like. As well as the fee to ICANN.

It smells a bit like a pyramid scheme to me.

Don't forget folks, this is not just about *registering* the gTLD domain name you'd like to use (at a minimum estimated cost of £50k), but also the whole contractual requirements that such registration brings about *running* the gTLD, including all the hardware, requirements such as 100% DNS uptime, 99.99 SRS to the wider community availability etc.

So if you do decide to fork out the £50k+ fee for registering I hope you have some extra cash for all your capital costs in setting up and running everything. That's also a contractual requirement and necessary in order for your application for a gTLD to succeed in the first place.

Currently ICANN are saying that the baseline technical requirements would be similar to those used for .net so if you're still interested look here for what you'll have to provide http://www.icann.org/tlds/agreements/net/appendix7.html

I agree with Nate and jeremy's observation that this effectively pulls the rug from under the business model of all the "new" TLDs. Apologies for the repetition, but I think this is the big news here. The likes of .EU, .ASIA, .BIZ are dead.

In fact, they are so dead that their value is now probably *less* than zero. In a world where any Tom, Dick or Harry is allowed to manage the DNS for their own TLD, the masses will learn that most TLDs can't be trusted. They will therefore place their trust in the the few that they can remember. That means the Big Four and those ccTLDs that correspond to countries with accessible legal systems.

Indeed, if ".us" would just get its act together and act as a proper ccTLD, we could close the Big Four to new entrants (and work long term towards abolition) and build an internet whose geography matched the legal landscape that it *ought* to operate in.

I don't get why people are being so hostile to this change. It's just finally getting rid of the crappy old tlds which for years, have been irrelevant.

"This seems rather like a solution looking for a problem."

The problem from ICANNs perspective is that if all they manage is a name to address lookup list of a measly couple of hundred TLDs so those using this list can find the DNS servers authoritative for said TLDs, their function could be replaced overnight by an association of TLD DNS operators. Multiply this to a highly complex set of contractual relationships to tens of thousands of customers with tens of thousands of TLDs and you have a house of cards which only ICANN can easily manage.

What ICANN want to do here is to create a large enough lobby of TLD private tenants to prevent the development of Internet governance based on a framework of international law and to keep their operation within their own private domain. The question to ask is do we want the Internet governed by a private company or through the framework of international law. A more legitimate way to exercise ICANNs powers would be to bring these under the ITU:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Telecommunication_Union .

All very well for ICANN to talk about deregulation as with the Thatcherite telecoms liberalisation, but in this case there is no OFFCOM and only one company selling TLDs.

I'm going to buy, wait for it....

.cotton

Ha ha ha.

Oh, what confusion this will cause. I really want to register .htm and .html and .http as new TLDs just to see what happens...!

A pedant writes: I think it might have to be http://starbucks./ (with a dot?)

"Why would you wanna point your domains to my internal webserver?"

That was probably just an example IP. The actual one is probably public

If ICANN want to charge up to $100,000 for each new domain suffix then what exactly will they be doing with their windfall if they're a not-for-profit organisation? Give the hundreds of millions away to charity? That would be nice but I very much doubt it.

This is a proposal motivated by greed. They've seen how Internet companies have made millions and now they want to cash in on it. It will cause chaos and uncertainty not ot mention 1000's of new disputes and legal battles. It will confuse the public too. ICANN's job was to prevent chaos and to maintain a structure of domain names. A free for all is not the way forward. Very, very sad.

This is going to be trouble.

As mentioned above, what happens when someone registers a tld which corresponds with the name of a comp on your network?

For example, I name my computers after cartoon mice in general. My main server is mickey. So, when Disney decide to register a TLD of .mickey, and they use just this for info about mickey mouse, I am screwed.

Why oh why are they doing this? There are already too many TLDs. Oh yeah, 6 figures is the reason. Someone should grab ICANN by the short and curly's before it's too late.

Why on earth is it a good thing to allow the creation of 'www.barclaysbank' ?!? Phishers dream...

ICANN: "Hmm, how can we make more money? I know, let's sell any collection of characters as a TLD. Yeah, that's a good idea..."

I only wish that I could afford the infrastructure to put a business plan in for one or two TLDs that I am considering.

Not sure about the cryllic & chinese characters though. I have enough trouble with my keyboard wanting to switch between American, French & UK layout without having to cope with more & for urls too!

"in the low six figures in *American* dollars"

Just wait a little bit - by Christmas that'll translate to just a few quid for you guys across the pond!

Not necessarily

A nameserver can in technical theory at least be authoritative for more than one TLD so that means that for example Nominet (operates the auth nameservers for .uk) could register .ni for Northern Ireland and its nameservers could become authoritative for this too which means it would resolve to the same IP at the top level at least.

Honestly though, what's the f'in point to this? Anyone here *ever* use see any one use any of those other TLDs that ICANN created? (Those would be .aero, .biz, .coop, .info, .museum, .name, and .pro) Didn't think so...

So now we're just going to create an extra useless but confusing sea of stupid bullshit TLDs further overloading the Domain Name System so that ICANN can make a few bucks. A solution in search of a problem. Bravo, well done.

There seems little discussion of the technical issues involved. If I purchase a Cyrillic domain name are my browser, computer, TCP/IP stack, router and upstream provider all going to be able to cope?

Don't worry. All addresses are required to domain name, and a domain name can't be just a top level domain. You are allowed to have an address pointed to your main domain, but that has to consists of at least foo.bar, not just bar.

So if you have a machine called mickey on your local network, then you must presumably be using a local domain of something like .local or .lan or something, and your search domain would be .local or .lan so that when you ask for mickey, you are actually asking for mickey.local or mickey.lan. Anyone running a TLD of mickey, would be able to have domains like hey.mickey and go.mickey, but mickey by itself is not a valid domain, only a top level domain.

As much as I think this a completly dumb idea in the overall picture of the internet, I can see one or two groups of people combining spending forces to acquire custom TLD's such as .jedi where contributers would get the chance to have their own sub-level domain name for free.

Can we have a new internet please? this one is overflowing with an abundance of spammers, scammers, bloggers, governments trying to control it, RIAA/MPAA etc. trying to control it etc.

"Honestly though, what's the f'in point to this? Anyone here *ever* use see any one use any of those other TLDs that ICANN created? (Those would be .aero, .biz, .coop, .info, .museum, .name, and .pro) Didn't think so."

Actually www.dub.aero and www.snn.aero both redirect to the websites for Dublin (DUB) and Shannon (SNN) airports. If SITA had half a brain they'd have set up redirects for all major airports with designated codes, and for international airlines, so that the public would have become familiar with the domain. A couple of days work for an intern would have given then some return for the man-years of time wasted in committee meetings and negotiations with ICANN. (They don't even do a redirect on their own website - www.sita.com and www.sita.aero point to the same IP address, but even though they use @sita.aero e-mail addresses, they don't redirect visitors to www.sita.com to www.sita.aero

And from December 1st 2008, they're not even going to reserve Airport names any more - anything not already registered will be available on a first-com first-served basis (to those with some vague connection the the aeronautical industry, or a good relationship with a registrar who won't ask too many questions).

The stinger is that some scripts have characters visually indistinguishable from characters in other scripts.

Example:

Cyrillic ІЈАВЕЗКМНОРСТУҮХ are lookalikes of ASCII characters, but are NOT the same.

[If your browser isn't Unicode aware or you don't have a Cyrillic font installed, that won't make sense. Note also that these are drawn from the Unicode "Cyrillic" range, and not all of these are necessarily used in one langauge.]

Thus you can have a Cyrillic TLD *.СОМ that is wholly distinct from the existing *.COM. Can we say phishing on a grand scale? There, I knew you could do it! You can always depend on the El Reg readership!

I'm none too certain how to handle this kind of thing. Perhaps browsers will have to be told what script/language/Unicode block [*] to display, and convert everything else to some kind of canonical representation in ASCII digits? I sure wouldn't want to be the dude who's tearing his hair out over this!

* Footnote: scripts, languages, and Unicode blocks are not synonymous. You might think that any given language is written in one script, but no. Serbo-Croation is written in both Latin and Cyrillic characters; Abkhazian has Arabic, Cyrillic, and Georgian representations. It's enough to drive a man to drink.

I think i'll register .local just because i'm curious how many people actually use this recommended domain name on their LAN, the number of hate emails i get when i add a wildcard record resolving to a web server serving nothing but popups and porn ads should allow me to estimate the number of companies effected

I might register .you as well, think of the potential subdomains... oh and i still have a bit of cash left over so i think i'll get .sucks and .rules to help fund it all

i also wouldn't mind .freetard so i can issue whatever@freetard email addresses, oh no i forgot there's no revenue potential from those people

Oh great. First they're going for the stupid idea of adding non-ASCII characters, so a lot of software will either break, or cope with it but then we'll have the average Joe baffled on finding how to type Chinese/Cyrillic characters in a qwerty/azerty keyboard.

Now we're also getting free-for-all gTLD's? Oh well, at least now phishers and 419'ers might get .con ... so now you'll know it's a CON, get it???

While I understand that .com has turned into something kind of cliché, well, the other "new" TLD's haven't really taken off, have they? Even with six-digit figures, this is just going to turn ugly.

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