With the battles raging over control of the internet’s domain space, a credible alternative to the status quo must be found soon. The effort of the Council of Registrars (CORE) – a group of 88 domain name registrars – to introduce new domain names has met a lot of resistance, but is likely to end up playing some part or another eventually. The government green paper on domain name system (DNS) management was published two weeks ago and has concentrated the minds of the internet community with only about three weeks left in the public comment period. Another group who many thought would play some sort of part going forward in the AlterNic, the alternative group of top-level domains (TLDs) that offer an alternative root to the one that propagates the .com, .net and .org TLDs, run by Network Solutions Inc under a government contract. However, the AlterNic looks to be tearing itself apart, as founder Eugene Kashpureff, on bail on federal wire fraud charges, attempts to wrest control from the people who are now running the service (see separate story). However, a new group has emerged called the Open Root Server Confederation, whose founders are Einar Stefferud, the founder of First Virtual Holdings Inc and Richard Sexton, who was running the AlterNic in between Kashpureff periodically snatching back control. Another associate of the ORSC is Marc Hurst, who worked with Sexton on the AlterNic, and is also a member of CORE, as he runs a registrar in Canada. Hurst says he expects some of the AlterNic’s registrars to support what the ORSC is trying to do, namely get root zones co-ordinated so new TLDs can be added to the internet’s root zone in an orderly fashion. Hurst says the ORSC is run on a voluntary basis and will be coordinating responses to the green paper. He said he has had limited success in convincing other CORE members that they should think about some of the AlterNic’s TLDs as well as the seven new ones CORE is supporting. He says core is fractured about the issue. Sexton’s registry, VRx Network Services Inc is already reflecting some of the CORE TLDs in an effort to drum up support. Kashpureff feels that local roots should be established around the world comprising various registries and companies would vote with their name server and TLDs would succeed or fail on how many people registered domains with them.
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