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Key Internet Domain Up for Grabs
This month, the overseer of the Internet's addressing system will begin deciding
what company will run the .net domain. The stakes are high, and so is the responsibility.
To almost anyone who has a passing familiarity with computers, the term "dot-com" instantly evokes the Internet and everything associated with the online world.
That is not quite the case for "dot-net."
Regarded by most ordinary Internet users as ".com's" less-attractive cousin, ".net" is nevertheless the world's fourth-largest Internet domain and a key conduit for massive amounts of Internet traffic. This month, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the group that oversees the Internet's global addressing system, will begin deciding what company will run it.
The stakes are high, and so is the responsibility: The winner will take in about $30 million a year, but if the domain were to fail, huge swaths of online real estate -- including Web sites like Amazon.com and e-mail networks like those operated by Comcast and Earthlink -- could go dark.
"It's the most important decision ICANN has ever had to make," said Tom Galvin, vice president of government relations for VeriSign, the Mountain View, Calif.-based firm that operates .net and .com under contract with ICANN. Roughly 30 percent of all e-commerce traffic and more than 150 billion e-mail messages a year travel through .net, which is also home to 4.9 million registered Internet addresses, according to VeriSign.
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By contrast, .com has more than 30 million registered addresses and is easily the largest of the domains in terms of both registrations and Internet traffic. The smaller .org domain -- originally intended for use by nonprofit groups and other organizations -- has about 3.2 million registrations.
As the operator of the registry, VeriSign acts as the sole wholesaler of Internet addresses ending in .net. Whenever a retail company sells a .net name to one of its customers, it pays VeriSign $6 a year to register the address. VeriSign maintains the master list of .net names, and is responsible for making sure the domain is always on and reachable throughout the Internet.
In 2001, VeriSign agreed to relinquish its hold on .net in exchange for a contract that would give the addressing giant near-permanent control over the larger and more lucrative .com. The deal allows VeriSign to bid to continue operating .net, but does not give the company preferential treatment.
With the hunt for a new .net operator set to begin, VeriSign is warning lawmakers, high-tech companies and the media that choosing the wrong successor could be disastrous.
Large tech firms like IBM, Sun Microsystems and MCI have sent letters to ICANN President Paul Twomey urging him to be cautious in choosing a new .net operator or to let VeriSign keep the domain. Microsoft Corp. Senior Vice President Craig Mundie wrote a letter to U.S. Commerce Secretary Donald Evans asking him to keep .net under VeriSign's control. The Commerce Department must approve ICANN's choice for a new operator before a switch is made.
Critics of VeriSign, including some of the company's likely competitors for the .net contract, accuse the company of fear mongering in an attempt to bully ICANN.
"I'm a little suspicious of people who are hyperventilating about it, because I think they are playing into a public relations campaign that VeriSign is waging to try to prevent change," said Milton Mueller, a professor of information studies at Syracuse University and the author of "Ruling the Root: Internet Governance and the Taming of Cyberspace."
Ram Mohan, chief technical officer of Afilias, a Dublin-based Internet addressing firm that is considering submitting a bid to operate .net, said his company's takeover of .org from VeriSign in 2003 proves that such transitions can be made smoothly. Afilias manages the technical side of .org for Public Interest Registry, the Reston, Va.-based nonprofit group that won the right to manage the domain.
"There's no question that .net helps underpin the Internet. The one [assertion] that strikes me as incongruous is that if you touch .net, everything will fall apart," Mohan said.
The .net domain was originally intended to serve the techies who operate Web sites, e-mail networks and other online communications hubs. Now it often serves as a second-choice domain for people who cannot get the .com address they want.
Still, many Internet service providers, e-commerce firms and Web site operators base their online operations in .net. As a result, e-commerce sites like Walmart.com and Amazon.com as well as government sites for the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Security Agency rely on .net "name servers." If the servers go down, so do the Web sites, even if they end in ".com or .gov."
That is not a good reason to keep .net under VeriSign's control, said Paul Vixie, president of the Internet Systems Consortium, a Redwood City, Calif.-based firm that plays a central role in Internet communications by publishing and maintaining one of the most widely used software programs for domain servers.
"I agree it's a very important resource, but that doesn't mean we can't move it. If anything, I'd argue that means we should move it so that we don't have all of our eggs in one basket," Vixie said.
VeriSign used to be the only wholesaler and retailer of Internet addresses ending in .com, .net and .org. In 1998, ICANN was created to break up the company's Internet addressing monopoly, formed under the auspices of the U.S. government. Since then, ICANN has approved the creation of several new Internet domains including .biz and .info, and has accredited more than 100 Internet address retailers.
VeriSign remains, however, the dominant player in the industry because it is still the sole registry of .com and .net addresses.
This has spawned a tense relationship with ICANN. Earlier this year, VeriSign sued ICANN in a California federal court seeking to curtail the group's powers. A judge dismissed that case, but VeriSign has re-filed in California state court.
The company's executives fear that focusing the decision on non-technical criteria could undercut ICANN's ability to recruit the safest and most stable .net operator, Galvin said.
ICANN General Counsel John Jeffrey said the tension will not color the .net
decision. Jeffery added that ICANN will appoint a third party, probably a yet-to-be-named
global accounting firm, to handle the evaluation process. VeriSign officials
applauded that plan.
Source: http://www.bizreport.com/
