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Independent Report Maps Possible Way Forward in Mitigating Domain Name Collisions

27-Feb-2014 | Source : | Visits : 7479
LOS ANGELES - An independent report commissioned by The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has offered a set of concrete recommendations on how to mitigate potential risks of domain name collisions.

According to ICANN, a name collision occurs when an attempt to resolve a name used in a private name space results in a query to the public Domain Name System (DNS).

“This report takes an in-depth look at the collision issue and the potential risks and impacts, and gives us some very clear advice aimed at how to help system operators detect and mitigate those risks,” said Akram Atallah, President of ICANN’s Global Domains Division. “The next step is to seek input from our community on the report’s findings.”

The report stressed that name collisions are nothing new and that any issues that arise from expansion of the Top-Level Domains (TLDs) under ICANN’s New gTLD program would resemble those that occur in other parts of the DNS. But the report noted that expanding the number of TLDs will not fundamentally or significantly increase the risks of name collisions.

Specifically, the study outlines a set of recommendations on how ICANN and the TLD operators should handle the issue of name collisions in the expanding TLD space:

• ICANN should require new TLD registries to implement and publish a 120-day controlled interruption zone monitored by ICANN immediately upon delegation in the root zone. 

o After the 120-day period, there shall be no further collision-related restrictions on the TLD.

• ICANN should have emergency response processes to analyze and act upon reported problems that present “clear and present danger to human life”.

• ICANN and others in the community should continue to collect and analyze data relating to the root servers and to the controlled interruption.

• The Top-Level Domains .corp, .home and .mail should be permanently reserved.

The report, Mitigating the Risk of DNS Namespace Collisions, is posted for public comment until April 21, 2014.

To review the report and/or make comments, go to: http://www.icann.org/en/news/public-comment/name-collision-26feb14-en.htm

For more information on name collisions, go to: http://www.icann.org/en/help/name-collision

For more information about the new gTLD program, go to: http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/

 ICANN’s mission is to ensure a stable, secure and unified global Internet. To reach another person on the Internet you have to type an address into your computer - a name or a number. That address has to be unique so computers know where to find each other. ICANN coordinates these unique identifiers across the world. Without that coordination we wouldn't have one global Internet. ICANN was formed in 1998. It is a not-for-profit public-benefit corporation with participants from all over the world dedicated to keeping the Internet secure, stable and interoperable. It promotes competition and develops policy on the Internet’s unique identifiers. ICANN doesn’t control content on the Internet. It cannot stop spam and it doesn’t deal with access to the Internet. But through its coordination role of the Internet’s naming system, it does have an important impact on the expansion and evolution of the Internet. For more information please visit: www.icann.org
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