Stephane Van Gelder - Extensions

Death of a domain

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 11:52:48 +0200

On September 30, .YU will cease to exist as Serbia transitions to its new .RS domain as the country's sole Internet suffix.

There's a little bit of Internet history being made over in Belgrade, Serbia, at the moment.

On September 30, ex-Yugoslavia's .YU will be disconnected from the Internet and all remaining .YU domain names will cease to function.

RNIDS, the local registry, initiated a transition to the country's new .RS suffix (the country code for Serbia) in March 2008. Yet the registry reports there are still around 4,000 .YU names (around 50,000 .RS names have been registered since the new suffix was opened).

Owners of those names need to go for one of the new Serbian suffixes (e.g. .RS, .CO.RS or .ORG.RS) asap if they want to stay visible on the Net.

I often talk about creating new Internet suffixes on this blog. It's not often I get to touch on the ones that are being killed off…

Dot TK reaches 15th million name… for real?

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Tue, 12 May 2009 11:52:11 +0200

No I'd never heard of it before domain names either! Dot TK is the Internet suffix for Tokelau, a 3-island territory off New Zealand, where life looks like being pretty good.

The .TK registry claims to have notched up its 15th million domain name yesterday! Now that's quite an achievement. If true, it means .TK is second only to .COM but ahead of .CN (China) our .DE (Germany).

To be honest, I find that very hard to believe. This despite the fact that .TK offers its domains in a way which could see it register large quantities. The registry works two services. There's the standard "buy your domain name from accredited registrars" such as INDOM. If you do, you simply get a .TK domain and do what you want with it.

But there's also an innovative free domain name service which is used as a "URL shortener" along the same principle as something like TinyURL. How does it work? Say I have a long URL which I'd like shortened to email to a friend or colleague. I go to the .TK registry's site and enter my URL. The registry responds with a suggested .TK domain. That domain is then pointed to my URL. It's all free as long as I put up with the registry's ads on my web page or my domain gets at least 25 hits every 90 days.

So a very different way for a registry to market its domain names and one which could in theory generate large volumes. But 15 million? As Ali G would say… "for real?"

New gTLDs to be delayed by third DAG?

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 15:03:48 +0100

Craig Schwartz, ICANN's Chief gTLD Registry Liaison. Photo SVG.

The first version of the Draft Applicant Guidebook published by ICANN late last year has generated such a large volume of comments that ICANN may slow the new gTLD program down by introducing a third DAG.

The current timeline has a second DAG set to be released in mid February, just before the first ICANN meeting of the year (Mexico). It's always been ICANN's plan to have a second comment period follow. It was then anticipated that the comments received would be used to write the definitive version of the Applicant Guidebook, to be published at the start of May.

Sticking to this timeline would probably allow ICANN to initiate its new gTLD program with a first round of applications towards Q4 2009.

Although by no means certain at this point, this may now be delayed. During a session on new gTLDs held yesterday in Rome (where ICANN registrars and registries are currently in a regional meeting), Chief gTLD Registry Liaison Craig Schwartz hinted that due to the high number of comments and questions ICANN has received on the first DAG, an extra draft may be required.

During that session, I put the question to Craig: "does this mean a third version of the DAG before the final version comes out?" Not unexpectedly, Craig was unable to provide a direct answer. After all, this is probably not a decision ICANN staff will take on their own and it's doubtful they actually know the answer at this point. Other factors may impact the new gTLD program timeline. One example, there may be some Board decisions in Mexico relating to this which the staff will have to implement…

Craig did explain that staff are currently involved in near daily meetings on the second DAG in an effort to come up with a document that takes full account of the extremely varied, sometimes divergent, views expressed during the comment period. "We've heard many voices asking us to slow down a little," he added. "But at the same time there are also a number of people who are explicitly asking us to stay on target." Trying to find the right balance will be the challenge staff will have to face in the coming weeks.

Afilias won't be getting .DK after all…

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 23:05:31 +0100

Despite being awarded .DK by the Danish Ministry of Science a few months ago, the Afilias/DotDK initiative will probably not run the country's top level domain after all.

Incumbent registry DK Hostmaster embarked on a determined propaganda campaign after loosing the government tender for the position it had held for so long. As a result, the Ministry told Parliament on Tuesday November 25 that DotDK would not be getting the licence to run .DK.

A lack of local Internet community support is the official reason. Not a very believable one. Expect much legal wrangling in the weeks ahead.

The licence for .DK is awarded for a 6 year period and DK Hostmaster already plans a significant number of upgrades to the way it does things if it does end up being given a second chance by its own government.

One is the adoption of the industry standard EPP protocol for registry/registrar system interfaces, which makes domain management a lot more efficient and reliable. Another is a move towards IPv6. And there's also talk of increased participation in international Internet governance bodies and organisations.

.TEL ramps up PR ahead of 2009 launch

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 22:30:58 +0200

.TEL registry Telnic is taking its "Tell The World" motto at face value and launching into a campaign to inform the general public about a new suffix based on technology that's difficult for non domain experts to understand.

Expect to hear a lot about .TEL in the next few days. Registry Telnic has been promoting the suffix at San Diego's Demo conference this week. The result is a string of news stories in papers like the Financial Times.

I really like the concept of a unique identifier behind .TEL and the clever way in which it takes an existing system – in this case the DNS – and gives it a new twist. But I have to admit that the benefits of .TEL aren't easy to explain to non-domain experts.

So Telnic are right to get the general media to explain it for them. Outside of our closed world of domain name professionals, people tend to talk normally instead of slipping a juicy bit of jargon like "zonefile" in every other sentence. That can only help everyday Internet users who don't care about what makes .TEL work and just want to get the best out of a good product.

.MOBI alive and kicking

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 12:34:38 +0200

DomainesInfo is running a little scoop today. They've learned from mTLD, the .MOBI registry, that the extension has now reached the magic ton, i.e. a million domains.

I have to put this in the context of another story I read on .MOBI a few days ago. Writing for the ClickZ Network, Rebecca Lieb argued quite simply that .MOBI is already dead!

How ironic, then, that days later the registry is set to officially publish registration numbers that most of the world's Internet suffixes can only dream of reaching one day.

The rationale behind Lieb's statement does, however, kind of click. She says that the latest mobile navigation devices such as Apple's iPhone make .MOBI redundant. Because users can upload standard web pages on such devices and therefore don't need specific web content designed for them, it's simpler for them and website publishers to stick with just the one extension (use only a .COM for example instead of having an additional .MOBI for small screens).

Is this really the case? I have an iPhone and I must admit I have never used it to go to a .MOBI website. But it's also true that many a time while browsing the web on my iPhone, I have wished for iPhone-specific content. Despite the iPhone's clever technology and big screen (for a phone), you're still not accessing the web in its natural environment.

So there it is. I think there's a clear case for .MOBI and that it's actually one of the most useful concepts for a new extension because it has a well-defined purpose. What do you think?

Oh dear .ME!

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 17:42:58 +0200

It seems that the .ME landrush hasn't gone well. Many prospective .ME registrants have not been awarded the names they were after, and the registry system itself seems to have lost track of reality and started awarding the same domains to several registrants.

A Washington Post article claims that registrants have had their credit cards charged by GoDaddy, who has partnered with Afilias to launch .ME, even though they didn't get the name(s) they were after.

The problem appears to be bigger than expected demand for .ME and an inability for GoDaddy's servers to keep up with it. I find that extremely worrying if that's true, considering the millions of domains said company currently has under management. Should we expect their servers to crash under that load as well?

A plethora of new extensions

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 19:37:25 +0200

Several proposals for new gTLDs were highlighted in Paris, during the EGENI 2008 meeting just before this week's ICANN meeting. Among the new suffixes that could see the light of day there's a .SPORT, a .QUEBEC, a .MED and even a .NAI for "North American Indigenous", i.e. North America's native Indians.

New York wants to be a part of it

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 16:25:10 +0200

The New York Times reports on the .NYC initiative in an article about the Connectingnyc initiative. The push for the creation of a .NYC comes at a time when "City TLDs", that is suffixes created to represent specific towns or cities around the world, are all the rage. The .BERLIN and .PARIS projects are already well known and others are apparently afoot as well. NY City obviously wants to be a part of that.

As INDOM is involved in the .PARIS project, I was very interested to learn a little more about the .NYC application. The rationale is the same as that for .PARIS or .BERLIN: making the global Internet a little more local for specific uses like tourism or city services for example. Read the .NYC article here.

Getting revved up about .CAR

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Fri, 23 May 2008 19:11:34 +0200

Let me start this post by saying that I am a total car nut. That might help you understand why I'm so excited to hear about a proposal for a new gTLD that would be called .CAR.

The proposal comes from ATX, a firm I'd never heard of (and perhaps that's also the point of the .CAR proposal: a publicity stunt) but which claims to be "the world's largest independent telematics services provider to the automotive industry", whatever that means.

The rationale behind .CAR is very similar to .MOBI's. The idea is to have an extension for content designed specifically for use in the automotive environment. "Browsing the Internet in the vehicle is a unique environment with unique characteristics," says ATX. The proposal also stretches to the possible use of .CAT sites in conjunction with onboard vehicle data such as performance, maintenance or location data.

Don't know how serious .CAR, but I love the idea of web content designed specifically for in-car browsing…

England wants its own domain

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 22:19:10 +0200

After reading this post's title, your first thought is probably "the English already have their own domain with .CO.UK, don't they?"

Well it appears they don't agree. An online petition has been launched the persuade ICANN to sanction a .ENG domain. "For many years the UK's online entity has been represented by the .CO.UK domain extension," claims the petition's website. "The Welsh and the Scots have been campaigning for their own country-specific domains .CYM and .SCO respectively, despite not being classed as independent countries. We believe that we - the English - should also be allowed our own independent voice on the internet and show our patriotism through our choice of domain name."

The petition is still young as it was launched on April 23rd of this year. Its creators hope to gather around 10,000 signatures before taking it to ICANN and, in their own words, "lobby ICANN to make .ENG available."

Seasoned ICANN watchers will no doubt consider this plan a little flawed. New TLDs such as .ENG can of course be okayed by ICANN, but only if they are part of the Internet overseer's official new TLD request for proposals (RFP). This means putting together a complete business plan, like .BERLIN or .PARIS are doing, so that the new TLD project can be submitted to ICANN when the RFP process begins (the next one is currently expected early in 2009). Doing so requires deep pockets and, if you're claiming to represent a nation such as England, clear support from national authorities or government.

In other words, although a nice try, it's very doubtful that a web petition would suffice, even if it does draw a large amount of signatures.

P.S.: Here are the links to the Welsh's and the Scot's attempt to get their own domains.

.ARABIA, .RUSSIAN… a new run of TLDs?

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 21:38:50 +0200

Dubai's famous 7-star Burj Al Arab hotel. A recent ICANN conference held in Dubai prompted suggestions of a new TLD linked to the Arabic region.

There's a lot of talk about the possible types of new TLDs that could be made available on the Internet in the near future.

Just days ago, stories coming out of Dubai, where ICANN has just held one of its outreach meetings, mentioned a possible .ARAB or .ARABIA for the region.

I've also been hearing of possible "linguistic" TLDs like .RUSSIAN, .CHINESE or .GREEK. The idea remains one of pushing for a more regional Internet, where local flavours are brought to the fore. And it's also a great way of pushing for IDN use, as obviously if we're talking regional or linguistic TLDs, they would need to be useable in the areas or languages they represent. In short, a perfect solution for killing two birds with one stone, both IDNs and the launch of new TLDs being hot topics at ICANN right now.

But the "fad" of the moment remains the "City TLDs" or "cTLDs" for short. Projects such as .BERLIN and .PARIS are known to be underway and would obviously be the first on the table should ICANN start a new official round of request for new TLD proposals.

When might that be? By latest estimates, not before the start of 2009…

Whoa, hold your horses there, Dot ME!

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 20:54:14 +0200

Francesco paints a humorous picture of .ME's launch programme, which we revealed at the end of March in the French edition of Domaines.Info.

His message to the Montenegrin powers-that-be: don't rush things and make sure you get the launch right. Sound advice. Even if the local registry's angst to open for business is understandable, mistakes made at the launch of a new extensions are generally then carried over for years before they can be fixed.

So let's hope the people at .ME do resist the temptation to rush things, because there's a domain with plenty of potential if I ever saw one (just think of all those possibilities with a "me" on the end...).

For those of you who don't understand French, here's the current launch schedule published in the March 27th edition of Domaines.Info.

From March 25 to April 16, a priority period will enable prior registrants of .YU domains (.ME is being migrated from the ex-Yugoslav suffix) to request the equivalent .ME name.

From May 1 to May 6, .ME's sunrise period will be restricted to Montenegrin nationals.

From June 6 to June 26, the registry has announced a landrush period, the precise rules of which are apparently not yet finalised. This, in part, is what prompted Francesco's warning to the registry to take its time and do a proper launch.

Go-live is planned from July 17th.