Gerry,You are absolutely right - there are only relatively minor technical obstacles
in having a large number of TLDs.
TCP ports (at least until recently - they have
a much smaller range available) were freely registerable by individuals who could
show that they had a valid use for them. The same is true (still true?) for MIME
types that are developed for different applications.
Obviously, there would be
a number of policy issues involved in having a larger number of TLDs, but with simplified
registration and minimum requirements, it should be fairly straightforward.
Incidentally,
this would help resolve the new.net and AlterNIC TLDs' status, since it would prevent
duplicate TLDs from different providers, and encourage multiple registrars to compete
in each TLD. It would also guarantee routability of addresses across the Internet.
Hopefully
the money (!) that was paid for each new TLD would be used to support the root server
system and future development of the DNS.
- Miles.