Re: [dnsproc-en] Re: Suggestions for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

["Christopher Ambler" <cambler@iodesign.com>]

>The list of TLD applications to IANA was posted to the iahc-discuss list
>by Jon Postel. There were about 150 TLD applications by about 35
>companies (the proposal at the time was for each company to serve 3 TLDs
>each).

To complete the thought, many of those requests were duplicates, and quite a
few were not requests at all, but messages in the form of, "IANA, I would
love to be able to register names in the .whatever TLD, would you create
it so I can do this?"

Of those that were requests for TLD allocations, a majority were from people
or companies who have since abandoned the request, or decided against
actually doing it.

I believe, if a poll were to be taken today of those involved in this
debate, you
would find no more than 15 companies who are interested at this time. Once
new TLDs are being added, I would wager that there would be no more than
50 companies interested in participating. The market will saturate quickly,
and only the serious competitors and those with value to add will remain.
Consolidation will occur quickly (my guess is within 18 months) and there
will be no more than 20 TLD registries left by the turn of the millenium
(which,
I regret that I have to point out, is the year 2001, not 2000).

When you consider that the root servers currently serve .com, which has over
a million entries, there is no question that they could handle 100,000
(one-hundred
thousand) TLDs, much less the 100 new ones I suspect we would have.

All of this information is easily verified, yet many continue to argue about
it. It's
not about technology, it's about politics. Sad commentary, in my opinion.

--
Christopher Ambler
Personal Opinion Only