13 th november 2003stephen dyer centralnic limited1 domain names a brief history of confusion...

13th November 2003 Stephen Dyer CentralNic Limited 1

Domain Names

A Brief History

of

Confusion

Stephen Dyer


In the Beginning

• The Network• Jon Postel• Electronic Addresses such as:12345 • 194.23.45.67


A Bit Later

• Host File mapped memorable names to addresses:1 UCLA2 SRI3 UCSB4 UTAH5 BBN6 MIT7 RAND8 SDC9 HARVARD

• The number of computers increased


Even Later

• So some now familiar 3-letter suffixeswere introduced:

.com – companies

.net – network providers

.edu – academic institutions

.mil – military

.gov – governmental

.int – international treaty

.org – everything else

and all of these had the unspoken “US” with them


The Network spread abroad

• In 1985 and 1986, some European names were introduced, including these:

.de .fr .uk

• Plus another 180-ish two-letter Country-Code domains followed


The ISO 3166 List

• The domains were based around the two-letter codes for each country maintained by the ISO - the ISO 3166 list.

• Anomalies:GB vs. UK

Ukraine .UA

.GB and .OZ


RFC 1591

• It is extremely unlikely that any other TLDs will be created.

• Concerns about "rights" and "ownership" of domains are inappropriate. It is appropriate to be concerned about "responsibilities" and "service" to the community.


Top Level Domains

• GTLD’s Global Top-Level Domains

• ccTLD’s, Country Code Top-Level Domains

• USTLD’s including originals .gov, .mil etc


Sub-Domains

• Began with the logical progression to

.org.uk and .net.uk.

• Therefore what could be more sensible than

.com.uk, .net.uk, .edu.uk, .gov.uk, .mil.uk and .org.uk ??…


Well obviously:

.co.uk .ac.uk .nhs.uk .gov.uk

.bl.uk .jet.uk .x.uk .me.uk

.parliament.uk .police.uk .plc.uk

.org.uk .ltd.uk .sch.uk .mod.uk


New mixtures

• Further sub-domains introduced:

uk.com us.com au.com eu.com

• New uses for ccTLDs:

.MD

.TV etc


ICANN

• New GTLDS proposed:

.web .go .tel .dir .sex .xxx .fun .art .music .culture .help .shop .cash .home .kids etc.(Actually 33 in total)

.NAME, .PRO, .AERO, .MUSEUM, .INFO, .BIZ, .COOP (7 approved)


Rules of ccTLD

0

1

2

3

4

Lithu

ania

Luxe

mbo

urg

Belgium Ita

ly

Ger

man

y

Austri

a

Finlan

d

Nethe

rland

s

Dennm

ark

UK

Czech

Rep

ublic

Eston

ia

Roman

iaM

alta

Hunga

ry

Slovak

Rep

ublic

Latv

ia

Cypru

s

Sloven

ia

Irelan

d

Sweden

Bulgar

ia

Poland

Gre

ece

Spain

Franc

e

Portu

gal

Countries

1=o

pen

, 4=

rest

rict

ive


Success of ccTLD

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

Lithu

ania

Luxe

mbo

urg

Belgium Ita

ly

Ger

man

y

Austri

a

Finlan

d

Nethe

rland

s

Dennm

ark

UK

Czech

Rep

ublic

Eston

ia

Roman

iaM

alta

Hunga

ry

Slovak

Rep

ublic

Latv

ia

Cypru

s

Sloven

ia

Irelan

d

Sweden

Bulgar

ia

Poland

Gre

ece

Spain

Franc

e

Portu

gal

Countries

% in

tern

et p

enet

rati

on


Today

• .EU

• Sunrise Periods

• Trademarks

• Regulators – Oftel/Ofcom


.EU

• The Regulation

• The Launch

• Languages and Nonsense


Internationalised Domain Names

• Up until recently you could register

Faberge.com

But not:

Fabergé.com



• Special characters including: é, etc are

now possible

• You can now have .com

but strangely you can’t have

.



• Unicode

xn—nescaf-gva.com = nescafé.comxn—caf-crme-60ag.com = café-crème.com

• Cybersquatting vs. trademarks• Problems: Religions, minorities etc


Summary

An epitaph for Domain Name Regulators:

He tackled a job that couldn't be done,

With a smile, he went right to it.

He tackled the job that couldn't be done,

And he couldn't do it.


Domain Names

A Brief History

of

Confusion

13 th november 2003stephen dyer centralnic limited1 domain names a brief history of confusion...

Documents

nonsense slide

approved slide

ownership of domains

letter country code

memorable names

european names

new uses

letter suffixes