Nonstandard Internet Names


In this great age of open standards, virtually every company is tempted to re-create the benefits of closed and proprietary systems through private extension of the open standards. Even the Internet's domain naming system is not immune. Numerous private companies have sought to capitalize on ICANN's inability to quickly agree on an expansion of the Internet's namespace.

Expanding the Internet Namespace: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

The great debate about whether and how to expand the Internet's namespace transcends technical arguments. In fact, the technical aspects of any proposed expansion border on the trivial. Yet the debate has meandered through virtually every possible argument for and against expanding the Internet's namespace by increasing the number of TLDs.

The emergence of so many rogue registrars would seem to prove the economic viability of TLD namespace expansion. ICANN's inability to provide a quick answer to the popular clamor for new namespaces created an opportunity for entrepreneurial entities who weren't afraid to operate outside the Internet's standards by offering proprietary and nearly unlimited SLD/TLD combinations. Even a cursory examination of the whois database containing names "sold" by such registrars reveals an interesting phenomenon: Virtually all the names registered fall into just two small categories.

The first category is pornographic. Sad to say, this category represents the vast majority of SLD/TLD combinations registered via the rogues. Perhaps the best thing you can say about this is that capitalism is alive and well on the Internet, and this is an aspect of the Net that has proven itself commercially.

The second category is even more disconcerting. It can best be described as being illicit attempts at extortion. The game harks back to the very beginning of the Internet's commercialization. Many savvy individuals registered well-known names but did not develop any Web site or other Internet presence for those names. Such individuals merely waited until the legal owner of that well-known name (ostensibly a very large and well-funded company) became aware of the Internet's potential and sought to establish its own presence. At that point, the company either had to settle for a less-than-obvious domain name or had to negotiate with the "owner" of its Internet domain name. A modest annual fee had the potential to generate millions for those who had the foresight to see this opportunity and the willingness to play chicken with large corporations.

Despite the various Acceptable Use Policies (AUPs) and legal precedents established since those halcyon days, the other significant set of customers patronizing rogue registrars appears to be those bent on perpetuating that old game. Virtually every conceivable SLD/TLD combination for any given major corporation has been registered. This has given the large and well-funded corporations of the world adequate reason to staunchly oppose any expansion of the Internet's namespace. Such expansion, they argue, directly increases opportunities for infringement on their trademarks, brand names, and reputation.

As one of AT&T's two representatives on ICANN's Working Group C, I became intimately familiar with both sides of the debate. The sad conclusion I reached was that both sides were correct! There was, and remains, a tremendous need to improve the Internet's usefulness and scalability by increasing the number of available TLDs. However, that also increases the burden on virtually any company (regardless of size) that places any value on its trademarks, brand names, and so on. Failure to aggressively defend such property can be interpreted in the courts as an abandonment of that property. Thus, AUPs are of little consolation, and the cost of defending property only increases with each expansion of the TLD namespace if the new TLDs aren't carefully chartered and that charter rigorously enforced by an official sponsor.


ICANN chartered Working Group C to evaluate the desirability and feasibility of expanding the Internet's TLD namespace. Work in this group quickly got bogged down in politics and splintered into numerous factions. The great, and severely protracted, debate over whether to expand the number of available TLDs created an opportunity that has been exploited. Several "creative" organizations began offering virtually unlimited namespaces for an annual fee.

For example, the generic TLDs include .com, .net, .edu, .org, .gov, and .mil. Additionally, there are more than 100 country codes, such as .ca (Canada), .jp (Japan), and so on.

The rogue name registrars allow virtually any alphanumeric string to be assigned and used. Thus, even though sportack.com is already taken (and by a legitimate business, I might add), I could secure the rights to the mark.sportack namespace should I choose to patronize a rogue registrar. In such a case, mark would be the secondary domain and sportack the TLD. Obviously, such a TLD would have limited usefulness but would be very valuable to a very small number of people or organizations. This would be particularly true of famous names that are instantly recognizable globally without the context of a meaningful TLD. For example, Coca-Cola is a famous brand. You could argue that it is more famous than virtually any other registered domain in the .com TLD. Such a brand might benefit from being separated from the .com riffraff by having coca.cola as its domain name.

This approach heralds a dramatic departure from the original intent, and current usage, of top-level domains. TLDs offer a logical but extremely broad grouping for a very large collection of otherwise unrelated second-level domains. This is self-apparent in their names (commercial, education, organization, government, military, and so on).

Heated arguments have been made both for and against such unconventional namespaces. Those in favor claim that they make the Internet truly user-friendly by removing the pigeonholes that otherwise constrict name creativity. Those against claim that they lose the benefits of well-known TLDs that would let users make logical guesses at the name of a site they hadn't previously visited. I won't presume to judge the merits of such names, but I will point out that because they don't conform to Internet standards, they cannot be ubiquitously useful. That, in and of itself, limits their value.

Using Proprietary Names

To use these namespaces, you must point your browser to use their proprietary DNS. DNS is a networked application that automatically translates or resolves mnemonic names into IP addresses that network devices can understand and process. Such proprietary name resolvers support the full Internet namespace and also provide resolution of nonconforming proprietary names. Typically, the entity that "sells" you the annual rights to the use of a nonconforming name also supports that name in its DNS. Unless you are using their DNS, you cannot use that proprietary name. The name won't be recognized by conventional DNS resolvers and will generate an error message.

For a proprietary DNS to be successful, it must also conform to and resolve all the standards-compliant names in use throughout the Internet. The operators of such name-selling services understand that, and they ensure that their DNS is an extension of the standard Internet names. However, it is important to note that ubiquitous resolution currently is impossible, because the myriad rogue registrars do not cooperate with each other. Thus, yourcompany.yourcompany is an SLD.TLD pairing that might resolve to different sites, depending on whose proprietary DNS you are using.

Subdomains Within Private SLDs

There is yet another option for creating a somewhat proprietary namespace. It is technically possible for an individual or organization to register a domain name under one of the existing generic TLDs and then use it to create subdomains for sale to other organizations. For example, if you were astute enough to register eateries.com, you could conceivably sell the rights to subdomains created within that domain to virtually any restaurant operator. For example, "Eat at Joe's" could register the subdomain eatatjoes for an FQDN of eatatjoes.eateries.com. The URL would be www.eatatjoes.eateries.com. The overall effect is a longer domain name, but one that is highly mnemonic. In this manner, usability is enhanced by the creation of a more mnemonic SLD within an overly broad or generic TLD.




IP Addressing Fundamentals
IP Addressing Fundamentals
ISBN: 1587050676
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2002
Pages: 118
Authors: Mark Sportack

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