LOS ANGELES - The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) Name Collision Analysis Project (NCAP) Discussion Group has delivered its final Study 2 documents to the Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC). This achievement marks the culmination of more than four years of research, evaluation, and consideration, and a major milestone on the path toward opening the next round of new gTLD applications, according to the official website of ICAAN.

The SSAC is currently in the process of considering the NCAP Study 2 documents. The SSAC expects to deliver these documents to the ICANN Board for consideration, along with any relevant SSAC advice, in early May 2024.

The NCAP Discussion Group, which was formed in 2019, delivered a final report that contains 11 strategic recommendations. One of the key recommendations is establishing a new workflow, the Name Collision Risk Assessment Workflow, to enhance the process of evaluating new generic top-level domain (gTLD) applications. This recommendation underscores the NCAP Discussion Group's belief that name collisions should be approached not merely as a technical challenge but as a critical risk-management issue.

In addition, the NCAP Discussion Group delivered detailed responses to the ICANN Board's nine questions related to the definition of a name collision, user experience and possible harms, the causes of collisions, the potential risks, and possible mitigations, among other issues.

A name collision refers to the situation where a domain name that is defined and used in one name space is also present in another (see the proposed definition of name collisions published by the SSAC). Users and applications intending to navigate to a domain in one namespace may instead land on a domain in a different namespace, and the domain names may have different uses in each namespace, leading to confusion or even security threats. The circumstances that lead to a name collision could be accidental or malicious.

Completion of the NCAP Study 2 work is a dependency for the next round of new gTLD applications and is expected to impact the implementation of the Final Report on the New gTLD Subsequent Procedures Policy Development Process outputs related to name collisions, as noted in the New gTLD Subsequent Procedures Operational Design Assessment and the New gTLD Program: Next Round Implementation Plan.