[bc-gnso] Proposal for Development of New gTLD Name Collision Awareness, Education, and Tech Support Materials

["Baskin, James F (Jim)" <james.f.baskin@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

BC Members,

On our last conference call I spoke about domain name collision analysis work 
Verizon has been undertaking with Interisle Consulting.  We have been analyzing 
our DNS query logs to get a clearer picture of the extent and impact of 
"leaking" queries to not-yet delegated or operational gTLDs.

We have been considering a parallel effort to develop documentation, and 
possibly a webinar, to help prepare ourselves and our customers for 
telecommunications and systems problems that could arise once queries to some 
of the new gTLDs begin to resolve and receive responses other than NXDOMAIN 
(domain does not exist).

While preparing the plan to develop those materials, we realized that most of 
what we were describing would be of value to other carriers, ISPs, general 
business enterprises, and more.  As a result, we have decided to reach out to 
like-minded companies to jointly fund the development of these materials.

The following is a high-level description of the work effort.  With the support 
of a handful of companies, these materials could be rapidly produced and 
distributed at minimal cost to each of the participating organizations.  If 
your organization might be interested to supporting and benefiting from this 
work, please contact me to discuss it in more detail.  We are open to 
refinement or reasonable expansion of the deliverables, keeping in mind that we 
want to keep the development timeline as short as possible since the first new 
gTLDs will go live within the next month.

Thanks for your consideration, and please feel free to share this message with 
other organizations outside of the BC who might be interested in participating.

Jim Baskin
Verizon Communications


Proposal for the Preparation of Awareness, Educational/Training,
and Technical Support Materials Related to DNS Name Collisions

1.         Develop descriptions of specific query/response scenarios that could 
arise as a result of conflicts of private and public naming schemes in the DNS. 
 Document how these situations might appear to a user or technical support 
person, and what can be done to deal with such situations before or after they 
arise.  Integrate the material into a comprehensive awareness and training 
program.

2.         Create documentation for awareness, training, and support for 
management, employees/users and support staff.  Materials oriented for various 
audiences would include:

*         For management:  awareness materials about the potential operational, 
technical, and security risks of DNS name collisions.

*         For employees/users:  information about the changes in network and 
system behavior that could arise as a result of new TLDs being delegated, how 
to recognize when problems encountered could be a result of new TLD name 
conflicts, how they can resolve problems on their own, and when they will 
require technical support.

*         For customer-facing personnel (sales, marketing):  how to communicate 
with customers to make them aware of the change in TLD resolution behavior and 
the potential impact, before and after delegation of TLDs.

*         For technical support personnel:  step-by-step procedures for 
identification and avoidance or remediation of collision occurrences.

3.         Create communication information packages for distribution by email, 
web, etc. as appropriate, for target audiences, possibly including one or more 
webinars.

5.         If webinars are developed, conduct a single session of the 
webinar(s), which would be video-recorded for distribution.