ICANN’s recent decision to open up the rules governing Internet domain names garnered it quite a bit of media attention in the last week or so. Since there has been a fair bit of speculation as to what the new rules could mean, it seemed appropriate to take a quick snapshot of how the Internet’s domain name system (DNS) looks now.
This graphic shows the approximate number of ‘top-level’ domain names registered in each country (as a percent of all registered domains). Generic Top Level Domains (gTLD) have traditionally been restricted to well-known .com, .org, .net, .biz and .info suffixes – although there are currently 22 officially recognized gTLDs, including a number of sponsored or restricted use domains such as .edu, .gov or .mil. Only the five well-known domains are included in the above graphic.
The effect of the US’s historical role in developing and managing the Internet can be seen pretty clearly, with just over 32% of gTLDs being registered in the US. That’s down from about 40% a few years ago, however.
Last week ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) approved a plan to increase the number of domain name suffixes and to allow virtually any word to be registered as a domain (.canon, .ipad, .sport, etc). The cost of registering a new domain name will be $185,000 and there will be an annual fee of $25,000, both of which will be payable to ICANN.
Perhaps more significantly – at least in the long run – was the decision to allow characters from any language, including Cyrillic, Arabic and Chinese, in a domain name. With the rapid rise of Internet users reading and writing in languages that don’t use the roman alphabet, ICANN appears to be referencing the growing influence of Internet users around the globe who are arguably underserved by the Internet’s current naming system.
Rod Beckstrom, ICANN’s President and CEO, said that the changes approved by the board “have opened the door to an era of creative innovation unlike any other since the Internet’s inception.”
Critics have argued that the changes could introduce unneeded complexity and are likely to have little widespread appeal beyond a handful of global corporations looking to enhance their brands.
ICANN was established as a non-profit in 1998 and is responsible for the management and oversight of the Internet’s domain name system (DNS). The organization was created in response to suggestions by the U.S. Department of Commerce (DoC), who had previously held much of the responsibility for the management of the domain name system, alongside the National Science Foundation (NSF) and a variety of volunteers and contractors that were paid by the U.S. government.
Shortly after ICANN was formed, the DoC granted it authority over the Internet’s domain name management on a temporary, but renewable, basis.