News Review | Is ICANN Trying To Hijack The Global Internet DNS Root?

Domain Mondo's weekly internet domain news review (NR 2018-07-08) with analysis and opinion: Features • 1) Is ICANN Trying To Hijack The Global Internet DNS Root? 2) ICANN news: a. GDPR, RDS, WHOIS & ePDP Updates, and more, 3) Names, Domains & Trademarks: Dot COM Still King, and more, 4) ICYMI Internet Domain News, 5) Most Read.

UPDATE: SSAC2 Organizational Review

Assessment Report Webinar 12 July 2018

Time: 20:00 UTC [local time] 4pm EDT (US)
Adobe Connect Room: https://participate.icann.org/OrgReviews – (upon log-in, please, use the automatic dial-out prompt to connect your phone). More information here.
Editor's note: I have already submitted a comment, view here.
The Assessment Report (pdf).
Comment Deadline Extension - SSAC Review Assessment Report - 2 July 2018 - comments on the report are encouraged and can be sent to mssi-secretariat@icann.org until the new deadline of 23:59 UTC on 27 July 2018.

The ICANN Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) advises the ICANN community and Board on matters relating to the security and integrity of the Internet's naming and address allocation systems. This includes operational, administrative, and registration matters.

Original Post:
1) Is ICANN Trying To Hijack The Global Internet DNS Root?

source: iana.org

"Internet overseer ICANN is considering a self-managed governance model for the world's Domain Name System root servers – and one of the outcomes could be a reduction in the number of root servers"--theregister.co.uk.

Apparently the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the California "non-profit" corporation known as ICANN, is not content in having:

1. wrecked the global DNS by delegating into the global internet root hundreds of new gTLDs that "fail to work as expected on the internet" (see last week's News Review 2)c. SSAC2);
2. designed and implemented an ill-conceived new gTLDs program founded upon consumer fraud, a .BRAND extortion racket, exploitative pricing power and greed, and ICANN incompetence (pdf);
3. expropriated for itself and its "contracted" third parties, potentially every geographic term and reference in the world--cities, regions, states, etc.--for privatized monetary gain and exploitation (in perpetuity);
4. completely bungled its response to the European Union's data protection law (GDPR).

Now, ICANN, together with its dysfunctional, codependent and captive "ICANN community" dominated by "special interests" (lawyers, lobbyists, contracted parties), apparently wants more--the world's DNS root zone itself configured as 13 named authorities (see graphic above).

ICANN62 Presentation:

ICANN62 Transcript (pdf).

RSSAC037 A Proposed Governance Model for the DNS Root Server System | ICANN.org (pdf).

Editor's note: anything ICANN touches usually does not end well. For that pragmatic reason alone, before there are any other changes to the DNS root servers, I would suggest first that ICANN be prohibited from ever playing any role in the operation or management of the global internet DNS root servers, and that ICANN be required to divest itself from operating the L root server (transfer its operation and management to IETF or another affiliate of the Internet Architecture Board or the Internet Society).

2) ICANN News

a. GDPR, RDS, WHOIS & ePDP Updates: 

•  European Data Protection Board - Second plenary meeting, Thursday, 5 July, 2018 (pdf) excerpt below:

•  5 July 2018 Letter from European Data Protection Board Chair Andrea Jelinek to ICANN CEO Göran Marby (pdf) embed below, responding to 10 May 2018 letter (pdf) from Göran Marby, in which the EDPB reiterates what it (or its predecessor WP29) had previously told ICANN:

See also ICANN't get no respect: Europe throws Whois privacy plan in the trash | theregister.co.uk.

•  It didn't take long for the ePDP process to start going "off the rails"-- Stacking the deck? The ePDP on the Whois temp spec | internetgovernance.org. See also Proposed Temp Spec EPDP Membership Structure 27 Jun 2018 (pdf).

•  ICANN.org: ICANN Temporary Specification Model Registry Registrar Agreement Amendment Terms 02 Jul 2018--rra-amendment-terms-temp-spec-02jul18-en.pdf [pdf 58.4 KB]

•  Registry-Registrar Agreement (RRA) Amendment Procedure to be used with Temporary Specification for gTLD Registration Data | ICANN.org.

•  Temp Spec's Effects on Registry Agreement (RA) and Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) - ICANN Org Operations and Policy Research 11 June 2018 working draft (pdf) embed below:

See also: Expressions of Interest Sought for Chair of GNSO ePDP on the Temporary Specification for gTLD Registration Data--ICANN.org.

Editor's note: follow GDPR, RDS, WHOIS & ePDP updates on the mail lists here and here and on the wiki. Also note: "development of a post mortem on the RDS PDP and the closure of that PDP. Request that Post mortem is completed by end of July so that it can be shared with the Council" --minutes of the GNSO Council meeting on Wednesday 27 June 2018.

b. ICANN's next round of new gTLDs:
Initial Report on the New gTLD Subsequent Procedures Policy Development Process (Overarching Issues & Work Tracks 1-4) } ICANN.org--comment period closes 5 Sep 2018 23:59 UTC.

c.  Issues Open For Public Comment Closing in July--issue and close date (subject to change):

• Draft Community Travel Support Guidelines 16 Jul 2018 23:59 UTC

• Open Data Initiative Datasets and Metadata 27 Jul 2018 23:59 UTC

• Proposed Renewal of .COOP Sponsored Registry Agreement 27 Jul 2018 23:59 UTC

• Draft Proposal of the New Fellowship Program Approach 27 Jul 2018 23:59 UTC

• Short-Term Options to Adjust the Timeline for Specific Reviews 31 Jul 2018 23:59 UTC

• Long-Term Options to Adjust the Timeline of Reviews 31 Jul 2018 23:59 UTC

• Initial Report on the Protections for Certain Red Cross Names in all gTLDs – Policy Amendment Process 31 Jul 2018 23:59 UTC

3) Names, Domains & Trademarks

a. Dot COM Is Still King: "Afnic has published its 2017 study on the global domain name market, based on ICANN statistics, registry figures, specialized site information and internal research ... With nearly 135 million domain names, .COM remains the "heavyweight" in legacy TLDs and saw its market share increase from 38.9% to 39.5%, ... The "Other Legacy" TLDs suffered in 2017, losing 2% in stock. Overall market growth was 1.2% in 2017, down from 7.1% in 2016 ... nTLDs came to an abrupt halt in 2018, and saw their market share decrease ... The study of the distribution of domain names at the global level clearly shows a  predominance of North America for "Legacy" TLDs with nearly 58% of the .COM names, Europe for ccTLDs (49%), and Asia-Pacific for nTLDs (51%). The domain name market in 2017 was also marked by a phenomenon of change and recomposition. The concentration of players continued at all levels while the financial situation remained tense ..."--Afnic Study: The Global Domain Name Market in 2017 (June 28, 2018) | afnic.fr (emphasis added).

b. Designer Michael Kors is seeking injunctive relief and millions in damages from 150 entities operating in South Florida selling knockoffs online. The 28-page complaint (pdf) was filed June 21, 2018, in the U.S. District Court for Florida's Southern District Miami Division, according to flarecord.com, and alleges the defendants are committing "federal trademark counterfeiting and infringement, false designation of origin, cybersquatting, common law unfair competition and common law trademark infringement."

c. Australia ccTLD .au -- point vs counterpoint -- registry service providers Afilias vs Neustar (Neustar a/k/a ausregistry and ARI Registry Services):

Afilias: ".au Completes Historic Transition to Afilias, 3.1M Domain Names Transferred to New Infrastructure"--circleid.com
vs
Neustar: "Setting the story straight: Neustar’s role in auDA’s Registry Transformation Project"--ausregistry.com.au

Meanwhile auDA's share of .au domain name fees raises eyebrows--afr.com: auDA used to take "$2.66 a year from every domain fee, with $7.70 going to Neustar. The new breakdown, auDA told us, is a staggering $6.13 to auDA per domain per annum. Which presumably gives $2.54 per annum to Afilias ..." 

d. Brexit Notice--eurid.eu:  "... On 10 April 2018 EURid, the .eu registry manager, received a communication from the European Commission stating the following:

“The revocation of existing holders’ rights and the prohibition for registrars from processing any more requests for registrations or renewals for .eu domain names whose holders are no longer eligible must be prepared so that the necessary measures are effective as from 1 January 2021 or, in case that there were no withdrawal agreement in force before 30 March 2019, as from 30 March 2019.”

"Upon request of the Commission, we drafted a high-level plan to implement the domain name revocation scenario(s). At the same time, we highlighted several pending matters that should be communicated to the registry manager before we can enforce any measure. Among them:

• What is the earliest date on which the European Commission will be able to inform EURid of the chosen option?
• What domain names are affected by the decision of the European Commission? For example, will there be any difference of approach where the registrant is from Great Britain, Northern Ireland, Gibraltar or other British overseas territories?
• What will happen to domain names reserved by the UK government as listed in the Annex of EC Regulation 874/2004?

"We understand the concerns of our stakeholders about this decision. We are fully committed to share further details as soon as they become available to us and invite you to regularly visit this webpage for updates."

4) ICYMI Internet Domain News 

a. Top 5 Things you should know about DNS--The Domain Name System, or DNS, could be slowing you down or even exposing you to security issues--techrepublic.com.

b. U.S.: EFF Sues to Invalidate FOSTA, an Unconstitutional Internet Censorship Law--EFF.org.

c. The great firewall of China: Xi Jinping’s internet shutdown--TheGuardian.com 29 Jun 2018--"today the country has the largest and most sophisticated online censorship operation in the world."
See also  Freedom segregated--"a proposal of the Hainan government that would enable access to overseas social media platforms that are otherwise censored in China"... "was met with firm criticism when it was released on June 21, on the provincial government website"--hongkongfp.com [Editor's note: as the news story cited indicates, the proposal to allow full access to the internet on China's island province of Hainan has been withdrawn from the website where originally published.]

d. Russian activists turn to UN Human Rights Council about Internet censure--crimerussia.com.

e. Venezuela blocks Tor browser--cnet.com

f. EU: European Parliament to review copyright rules in September--the plenary voted by 318 votes to 278, with 31 abstentions to reject the negotiating mandate, proposed by the Legal Affairs Committee on 20 June. As a result, Parliament’s position will now be up for debate, amendment, and a vote during the next plenary session, in September--europarl.europa.eu.

g. Politically Correct? What Happens When Social Media Censors the News: Facebook apologizes to a Texas newspaper after it initially flagged a post of the text of the Declaration of Independence as "hate speech"--TheHill.com.

h. App Traps: How Cheap Smartphones Siphon User Data in Developing Countries - Tension between privacy and sharing of user data stokes a debate in West, but much less so in developing economies--WSJ.com.

5) Three Most Read posts this past week on DomainMondo.com: 

1.  News Review | ICANN Brought Its GDPR Train Wreck To ICANN62 Panama

2. Tech Review | Digital Advertising's Disruption and Data Addiction (video)

3.  World's Fastest Supercomputer, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (video)

-- John Poole, Editor, Domain Mondo 

feedback & comments via twitter @DomainMondo
Follow @DomainMondo

DISCLAIMER

Verisign $VRSN Q4 2015 Financial Results, LIVE Webcast Replay

Verisign 1-year stock chart (source: google.com) - VRSN Down 22% since December 4

VRSN closed UP today: $74.16USD 0.37 (0.50%)

Earnings conference call and LIVE webcast for the fourth quarter and full year 2015 of VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ: VRSN):  Thursday, Feb. 11, 2016, at 4:30 p.m. ET (prior to the earnings call, the earnings news release will be distributed via wire services at approximately 4:05 p.m. and also be available directly from the company's website at investor.verisign.com).

How to attend Q4 2015 Verisign Earnings Conference Call, Feb. 11, 2016, 4:30 p.m. ET:

• LIVE webcast (listen-only)-- Listen to webcast;
• Teleconference call , which will be accessible by direct dial at (888) 676-VRSN (U.S.) or (913) 312-1460 (international), conference ID: Verisign. 

An audio archive of the call will be available at investor.verisign.com/events.cfm. More info: investor.verisign.com.

UPDATE: Earnings Press Release -- VeriSign Q4 EPS of $0.79 beats by $0.01. Revenue of $272.62M (+6.5% Y/Y) beats by $2.42M. 2016 guidance: revenue of $1.11B-$1.135B (+5-7% Y/Y) vs. a $1.14B consensus; operating margin expected to rise to 62.5%-63.5% from 2015's 61.5%.

Noted during the call was the surge in Chinese .COM registrations in Q4 2015, and corresponding possible negative impact on Q4 2016 registrations (including renewals) anticipated. Also, ICANN and VeriSign are negotiating a 10-year Root Zone Maintainer contract which would run concurrently with a  new 10-year extension of the current .COM registry agreement, with no material changes in pricing terms of dot COM domain names from the present agreement. This new agreement for Root Zone Maintainer and extension of the .COM registry agreement would require approval of NTIA, and the ICANN and VeriSign Boards of Directors. Finally, looking forward, it was noted that Verisign would consider acquiring some new gTLDs as the expected industry consolidation occurs (due in part to the disappointing registration numbers in new gTLDs).

UPDATE: Verisign Conference Call transcript | Seeking Alpha: Verisign Chairman D. James Bidzos: "... we expect the first three quarters of the year to have roughly a similar pattern of quarterly net additions to the domain name base as we saw during 2015. However, we expect the fourth quarter of 2016 to be somewhat unique, as the expiring domain name base in that quarter will have the largest percentage of first-time renewing names that we've seen as a result of the strong Q4 2015 performance. While it's difficult to assess what the renewal characteristics of these new names will be due to the unusually large upcoming Q4 2016 expiring base, we expect fourth quarter deletions to be elevated. Accordingly, deletions could exceed additions in the fourth quarter of 2016. Based on these and other factors, we expect the first quarter 2016 net change to the domain name base to be an increase of between 1.5 million and 2 million names. And we are forecasting the full-year 2016 domain name base growth rate to be between 0.5% and 2%.  .... we're not actually changing the terms of the .com Registry Agreement. And this is not a renewal. This is an extension. We are negotiating entering into a 10-year contract with ICANN to perform commercial services as the Root Zone Maintainer ... we are discussing – the extension of the .com Registry Agreement for 10 years. So at that point, should all of these conditions that I described earlier, for example, approval of ICANN's Board of Directors and VeriSign's Board of Directors, no changes whatsoever can be made to the .com Registry Agreement without the consent of the NTIA ... Amendment 32 is a separate part of the Cooperative Agreement [which expires Nov.2018] that addresses pricing with respect to our ability to seek a price change [.COM] if we think it's justified by market conditions. So I certainly don't anticipate that that would change. That would remain. So VeriSign's right to seek relief from price controls based on market conditions that would warrant it would remain ... the new gTLD program could present some inorganic opportunities in our core business. And that's certainly still true. In fact, just recently, a group of observers of that marketplace, who are heavily involved in, all sort of opined that 2016 could be the year of consolidation in that business. And certainly those opportunities to acquire growth in our core business would be something we'd look at ..."

• Earnings Result 114.2 KB (pdf)
• Verisign Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2015 Results 45.1 KB (pdf)
• Quarterly VRSN Convertible Debenture Dilution Q4-2015 (pdf)

Financial Highlights

• Verisign ended 2015 with cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities of $1.9 billion, an increase of $491 million as compared with year-end 2014.
• Cash flow from operations was $189 million for the fourth quarter of 2015 and $651 million for the full year 2015 compared with $170 million for the same quarter in 2014 and $601 million for the full year 2014.
• Deferred revenues on Dec. 31, 2015, totaled $961 million, an increase of $71 million from year-end 2014.
• Capital expenditures were $12 million in the fourth quarter and $41 million for the full year 2015.
• During the fourth quarter, Verisign repurchased 1.8 million shares of its common stock for $150 million. During the full year 2015, Verisignrepurchased 9.3 million shares of its common stock for $622 million.
• Effective Feb. 11, 2016, the Board of Directors approved an additional authorization for share repurchases of approximately $611 million of common stock, which brings the total amount to $1 billion authorized and available under Verisign's share buyback program, which has no expiration.
• For purposes of calculating diluted EPS, the fourth quarter diluted share count included 21.4 million shares related to subordinated convertible debentures, compared with 14.7 million shares for the same quarter in 2014. These represent diluted shares and not shares that have been issued.

Business Highlights

• Verisign Registry Services added 4.6 million net new names during the fourth quarter, ending with 139.8 million .com and .net domain names in the domain name base, which represents a 6.3 percent increase over the base at the end of the fourth quarter in 2014, as calculated including domain names on hold for both periods.
• In the fourth quarter, Verisign processed 12.2 million new domain name registrations for .com and .net, as compared to 8.2 million for the same quarter in 2014.
• The final .com and .net renewal rate for the third quarter of 2015 was 71.9 percent compared with 72.0 percent for the same quarter in 2014. Renewal rates are not fully measurable until 45 days after the end of the quarter.

Verisign (verisign.com) is a global leader in domain names as registry operator of .COM and .NET top-level domains, provider of registry services and internet security, and also serving as the world's internet root zone maintainer under a cooperative agreement with the U.S. government.

Zone Files For Top-Level Domains (TLDs) - Verisign: Domain name base as of February 11, 2016:

.com 124,979,064 domain names

.net 15,811,181 domain names

Total: 140,790,245 domain names

The active zone as of 02/11/2016 contains 124,038,522 .com domain names and 15,602,017 .net domains totaling 139,640,539 domain names.

Worldwide Status and Growth in Top-Level Domains as of Q4 2015 (source: Centr Q4 2015 Global TLD Report): As of December, 2015, there were 311.5 million domains combined across all top-level domains (TLDs) globally – an increase of 4.4% over Q4 2015. In absolute terms, most growth came from legacy gTLDs, largely .COM, which grew higher than average due to sales in China.  ccTLDs grew a combined 3.2% over Q4 2015 – similar to the average observed for the fourth quarter over the past few years. Around 800 New gTLDs grew from 7.6 to almost 11 million domains--ICANN's new gTLDs represent a small share--3.5%--of the global TLD market share. According to Centr, the median growth rate of new gTLDs is declining: 

Median Growth Rate of New gTLD Domains Declining

All Top-Level Domains as of Q4 2015 - source: Centr

See also: VRSN Stock News - VeriSign, Inc. Stock | Seeking Alpha

Note the Schedule 13G filed with the SEC on February 10, 2016, disclosing Blackrock (domain: blackrock.com) increased its ownership to 5.8% of the outstanding shares of Verisign. Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (domain: berkshirehathaway.com) is also one of the largest stockholders in Verisign, owning 12,985,000 shares, or 11.46% of VRSN.

About Verisign: "Verisign, a global leader in domain names and Internet security, enables Internet navigation for many of the world's most recognized domain names and provides protection for websites and enterprises around the world. Verisign ensures the security, stability and resiliency of key Internet infrastructure and services, including the .com and .net domains and two of the Internet's root servers, as well as performs the root-zone maintainer functions for the core of the Internet's Domain Name System (DNS). Verisign's Security Services include intelligence-driven Distributed Denial of Service Protection, iDefense Security Intelligence and Managed DNS." (Source: Verisign.com).


Follow @DomainMondo

DISCLAIMER

ICANN New gTLD Program Plays Roulette With Internet Root Zone Stability

"CDAR Study cannot predict stability of the Root Server System"--Daniel Karrenberg, Chief Scientist, RIPE NCC, infra

"It [ICANN's CDAR Study Plan] may not be enough to ensure that 'a [new gTLDs] first round did not jeopardize the security and stability of the root zone system.'" --Business Constituency comment, infra

Comments closed 3 Feb 2016 at 23:59 UTC on ICANN's "Continuous Data-driven Analysis of Root Server System Stability (CDAR) Study Plan" --"This study has been commissioned to examine the technical impact of the New gTLD Program on the root server system. As the first step, The Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) and its partners SIDN and NLnet Labs are publishing the draft study plan for public comment. Feedback from the larger DNS community is critical to ensure a comprehensive approach to data gathering and analysis. Comments may be incorporated into the final study design." (source: ICANN.org, emphasis added)

For background on how ICANN has jeopardized the stability and security of the Internet Root Zone by launching hundreds of unwanted and unneeded new gTLDs into the internet root read:

• Verisign, ICANN, Internet Root Zone, Risk Factors to the Root Domain
• ICANN Admits New gTLDs Compromise Internet Stability and Security
• ICANN, DNS Abuse, New gTLDs: Bad Policy, Horribly Implemented

Now ICANN, as required by a previous commitment based on advice from ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee [PDF, 276 KB], has undertaken a study as described at the first link above.

Three comments were received, one of which appears to be a spam comment. Here are excerpts from the other 2 comments, which are illuminating (emphasis added):

First, from Daniel Karrenberg (pdf), Chief Scientist, RIPE NCC, (not speaking  on behalf of the RIPE NCC)--"CDAR Study Cannot Predict Stability of the Root Server System ... The DNS root name server system is a complex system with hundreds of servers, tens of thousands of clients and millions of users all connected by the open Internet and subject to unpredictable use and abuse. The proposed core methodology of the study is a "quantitative model" based on measurement of past behavior of the DNS root server system. Models of complex systems are by their nature simplifications. Well constructed models may indeed be very useful to predict possible instabilities in the real-world systems. However these models cannot predict the *absence* of instabilities in complex real-world system with any useful level of confidence. In other contexts this is referred to as "past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results". Our main comment and advice to the researchers is to carefully avoid any perception that their results predict the absence of instabilities in the DNS root name server system unless the results solidly support such claims. Our main comment and advice to ICANN is: do not expect the study to predict the absence of instabilities in the DNS root name server system including absence of instabilities that may be wholly or partly caused by root zone expansion. ICANN therefore must make proper contingency plans for the unpredictable cases where root zone expansion causes or contributes to instabilities in the DNS root sever system."

Second, from the ICANN GNSO "Business Constituency" (pdf)--
"1) Page 4, Introduction: Root server scalability and possible impacts on performance attributable to zone file growth due to new gTLDs are of focus of this study. New gTLDs also may impact root server system stability and security in other important ways, such as the ability to successfully mitigate DDoS or other attacks that span a much larger DNS ecosystem, or vulnerabilities that may be introduced by newly deployed systems that interface with root servers. While measuring performance to verify that root server scalability risks have been managed is a good start, it may not be enough to ensure that "a first round did not jeopardize the security and stability of the root zone system." It is therefore important for this entire study plan to more clearly indicate what the study can and cannot accomplish. For example, on page 4, bullet a) should refer specifically to “root system stability” and bullet b) should not include security.
2) Page 5, Objective: The plan states: “The main objective of this project is to assess the impact of the new gTLD program on the security and stability of the DNS root system, up to the current point in time and beyond.” This objective may not be feasible; the limitations of this study should be acknowledged. This study will establish an important baseline against which future measurements can be compared to analyze trends, so it is important that the limitations of effectively measuring past root server system performance (before first application round new gTLD delegation began) be noted.
3) Page 7, Approach: The plan states: “This set of relevant parameters will be validated with the DNS community (ICANN, DNS OARC, etc.).” This validation is critical to ensure that the study focuses on the most relevant parameters to be measured and analyzed. However, it also may be appropriate to seek broader community input on parameter priority, feasibility, and usability so that the study can start with parameters that will have the greatest impact on preserving root system scalability and, importantly, identifying possible risks that must be mitigated to enable additional growth.
4) Page 8, WP-1: In addition to the organizations listed here, it may be appropriate to include measurement and modeling experts within the larger DNS community, including those who use and rely upon the DNS for day-to-day business operations. Notably, many global enterprises have deployed even larger distributed systems and may have valuable contributions to offer here.
5) Page 9, WP-2: The plan states, “…measuring the root security and stability from the new gTLD registry perspective are still an unexplored area.” The BC suggests evaluating the value of examining stability from the new gTLD registry perspective, to determine if this perspective should also be gained. This may be key since registries grow more numerous and diverse as a result of new gTLDs. It appears that only scalability can be analyzed from the measurements identified in WP-2. Please expand on the measurements to ensure that security and stability are adequately addressed.
6) Page 10, Root Stability Parameters: The BC recommends that the parameters be clearly defined with respect to gTLDs, ccTLDs, new gTLDs and other groupings within the DNS, and also geographic boundaries. Questions the study does not yet answer (but should) include: Will this study gather measurements across all TLDs, or only new gTLDs? Will it be able to differentiate between first round new gTLDs and subsequent round new gTLDs? Will it be able to differentiate between gTLDs and ccTLDs? Will it be able to break results down geographically? The BC also recommends soliciting community feedback on the parameters selected prior to implementing the study.
7) Page 11, WP-3: The BC would like to see a list of the questions that the DNS community hopes to answer when reviewing study results. For example, is there a correlation between latency and number of TLDs? If so, why. Also, will the study provide sufficient data to examine potential contributing factors to enable risk mitigation?
8) Page 13, WP-5: Reviewing preliminary results with the community to refine the approach and findings is extremely important. However, we note that additional work packages will likely be needed, following public comment, prior to project completion, to allow for the “more measurements and complementary analysis” mentioned.
9) Page 13, WP-6: The timeline given on page 10, especially the period for draft study report presentation to the community, appears optimistic. WP-1 has not yet begun and timelines for WP2/3/4 may well be too short to permit statistically significant results. We recommend that TNO et al specify a minimum length for WP-3 and WP-4, to allow sufficient time for collection and analysis to yield statistically significant results.
10) Additional note: The BC would like the new gTLD impacts on addresses as well as names to be considered as a topic of study (e.g. growth in reverse DNS queries, resolving IP addresses to new gTLD domain names), if not by this study, then by a future study building on the same methodology. Both identifier systems are potentially impacted by the significant growth attributable to new gTLDs."

Caveat Emptor!

Follow @DomainMondo

DISCLAIMER