CORE++ in the media
Rivals in battle over internet domain
Financial Times,
21.01.2005
Nuttall, Chris
An international challenge has been mounted to US domination of a key part of the internet that ensures the smooth running of e-commerce and the transport of billions of e-mails. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann), the net's governing body, has announced it received five applications by a January 19 deadline to run the .net domain in a tendering process due to be decided in March. Responsibility for the infrastructure behind web addresses ending in .net has always resided in the US. VeriSign, a listed company, maintains them and says it ensures the safe transport of more than 5m domain names, 3,000bn page views, 300bn e-mails and 30 per cent of e-commerce transactions every year. VeriSign, which runs the .com domain on a permanent basis, is bidding to retain control of .net but internet reformists would prefer a not-for-profit organisation with a more international flavour Its four opponents all emphasise non-US credentials in their bids. Afilias is based in the Irish Republic and currently runs the .org and .info domains. Denic of Germany runs the .de domain - the second largest after .com. NeuLevel of the US, which runs .biz, has teamed up with Japan Registry Services for its bid, while another joint venture Core++ represents the registries of Korea, Brazil and South Africa. Icann has been involved in along-running legal battle with VeriSign but has promised impartiality by appointing an independent third party to evaluate the proposals.
Challenge to US web domain body
Financial Times,
21.01.2005
An international challenge has been mounted to US domination of a key part of the internet that ensures the smooth running of e-commerce and transport of billions of e-mails.
Nuttal, Chris
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the net's governing body, has received five applications to run the .net domain, currently run by US company VeriSign, in a tendering process due to be decided in March. VeriSign's four opponents all emphasise non-US credentials in their bids. Afilias is based in the Irish Republic and runs the .org and .info domains. Denic of Germany runs the .de domain. NeuLevel of the US, which runs .biz, has teamed up with Japan Registry Services for its bid, while another joint venture Core++ represents the registries of South Korea, Brazil and South Africa.
.net wars is ICANN of worms
theINQUIRER.net,
21.01.2005
net.wars
Grossman, Wendy M.
IT PROBABLY hasn't made the Murdoch News where you live, but the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is in the middle of picking a company to which it will redelegate the .net global top-level domain when its current agreement with Verisign expires on June 30. ICANN is accepting comments from the public until February 2. The decision may be a key indicator of what the future of Internet governance will look like. Five companies have applied. One is good ol' Verisign, the legacy registry operator for .net, .com, and .org. I suppose with new gTLDs coming on stream, we could call those "classic DNS". Like Classic Coke, only different. The other companies are all unheard-ofs by comparison: Irish-based Afilias, which runs .info and .org; the international consortium CORE++ (which at least has the good taste to have registered its own domain in .net); the new, ad hoc partnership between Japan Registry Services and Neulevel Sentan, which ditto; and the German company DENIC, which runs .de, the second largest top-level domain after .com. At one time, nly people who worked at ISPs and other nettishly important organizations were allowed to have .net addresses. Then Virgin recklessly disregarded the best-laid plans of Jon Postel and men, and anyone could get in. As of last November, there were 5.1 million .net names to .com's 21 million. One of them is my own pelicancrossing.net. But, as former maverick ICANN board member Karl Auerbach points out, .net has much greater significance than its coolth quotient or raw numbers would indicate. Those 5.1 million registrations include the main group of DNS root servers, many ISPs, and the names of the servers for other large top-level domains – .com, .org, .mil... In other words, .net is in a very real sense the heart of the Internet. If blood – that is to say, traffic – can't flow through it, a lot of other things are going to stop functioning. Someone was ranting at me recently that while most people think of the Internet as a distributed system in reality it's plenty centralized, and here is a perfect example. Auerbach's point is interesting in part because most of the complaints I've seen about ICANN's efforts to redelegate .net focus on the 75 cents each .net registrant will be required to pay to support ICANN. Now, 75 cents isn't a whole lot, but to some of the old guard it looks like taxation without representation. Whether you agree with that complaint depends on whether you think ICANN is a government or not. Its mission is supposed to be technical oversight, though it's hard to see how that mission squares with its ever-increasing budget and its recent decision to contribute $100,000 to the UN's Working Group on Internet Governance. WGIG is the trying to plan the future of Internet governance, from the outside this looks very much like ICANN is trying to win friends and influence people. Which is hardly technical oversight and makes that 75 cents look more like a tax, especially since ICANN has given no indication of what the money's use is intended to be. In an interview, DENIC director Sabine Dolderer noted that this fee does not apply to other top-level domains, though of course ICANN may decide to extend it to others in the future. If present trends are any guide, it probably will. When it comes to choosing among the contenders to run the .net registry, again, any decision ICANN makes is more than a technical one. Quite apart from the $3.8 million awarding the contract with that .75 cents charge will drop into its own coffers, ICANN is awarding a big piece of business to whomever wins the contract. ICANN's Request for Proposals specifies that it must appoint an independent third party to evaluate the applications. Just as well: ICANN is locked in litigation with Verisign over the latter's Sitefinder, a search page that pops up by default when users type in a non-existent domain name. Then there's the diplomatic international relations aspect: the four applicants that aren't Verisign are all non-US outfits. ICANN can't win on this one. Americans tend to accuse ICANN of being too international. I can't count how many email messages I've had over the years from Americans complaining that the US invented the Internet and shouldn't give away control of it to other countries, when the truth is that creating the technology behind the Internet was an international effort. (And anyway, Britain invented the Post Office. Do they own it everywhere?) By contrast, a lot of technical folks outside the US think that ICANN is too American – it was set up by the US Department of Commerce, and lives in the US. Handing over the .net registry to Germany, Japan, or an international consortium would be the biggest move yet to internationalize the Net's inner workings. On the other hand, everyone hates Verisign. No matter what ICANN does, people will complain. If ICANN is smart, it will get its head down and focus on preventing messes like last weekend's hijacking of Panix.com. That would be technical oversight – and clearly it's badly needed.
Competition for .Net Domain Heats Up
NewsFactor Network,
21.01.2005
Four companies are challeginging VeriSign for the contract to operate the domain name registry for the .net top-level domain. VeriSign's contract expires in June. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers will select from among the bidders in March.
Wrolstad, Jay
Four companies have submitted bids to wrest control of the .net top-level domain (TLD) registry from VeriSign , according to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which will make a final decision on the offers in March. VeriSign's contract to operate the .net registry expires on June 30th, and ICANN had issued a request for proposals from organizations interested in signing a new six-year agreement. In addition to VeriSign, organizations that have submitted offers are Dublin, Ireland-based Afilias Ltd., the international consortium CORE++, Germany's Denic domain registry, and Japan-based Sentan Registry Services. At stake is a top-level domain that comprises a critical backbone of the Internet's infrastructure for e-commerce and communications, said Tom Galvin, a spokesperson for VeriSign. "Most people focus on .com, because it appears more than any other top-level domain, but .net plans a disproportionately large role in the Internet," he told NewsFactor. "It is frequently used to reach .com addresses, particularly among retail sites." VeriSign reports that .net supports some US$700 billion in annual e-commerce, 3 trillion annual page views, 300 billion annual e-mails, 58 percent of all Internet computer hosts and more than five million domain names. It also is employed by 8.5 million users in other domains, such as .gov, with .net name servers. VeriSign's Galvin said his company has a strong case for retaining the domain registry, citing 100 percent availability of .net services during the past seven years. "Our track record is stellar, and we have invested $150 million in Internet infrastructure supporting the .net and .com domains," he said. VeriSign's bid also has the backing of I.T. giants, including Microsoft, Sun Microsystems and MCI , he noted. There is some stiff competition, however. Afilias' registry system currently supports some 7 million domains, including .org and .info, as well as seven country code domains. The company pledged to reduce the wholesale price for .net to $4 from $6 per year. Core++ also promised price reductions and claims backing from global network information centers (NICs) including NICBR (Brazil), NIDA Consortium (Korea) and .za DNA (South Africa). The organization comprises domain registrars, registry operators and telecommunications and networking technology companies from Europe, North America, Latin America, Africa and Asia. Germany's Denic manages more than eight million .de domains, and is pushing the introduction of Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) in March 2004. Denic promised to re-invest earnings from .net into infrastructure expansion. Sentan, a joint venture of NeuLevel and Japan Registry Services, said it would expand .net to include improved services, global and multilingual support, and new technologies focused on Internet security and stability. "Our competitors are making lots of claims, but our track record is superior, and we are already working to extend the .net infrastructure globally with distribution centers worldwide," Galvin said.
Surprise Challenger To VeriSign .net Emerges
TechWeb.com,
20.01.2005
ICANN's announcement of five bidders for the operation of .net has been upstaged by the unexpected appearance of a global consortium, called CORE++.
Gardner, David
ICANN's announcement of five bidders for the operation of .net has been upstaged by the unexpected appearance of a global consortium called CORE++, which is likely to present stiff competition to VeriSign, which currently manages the .net Top Level Domain (TLD). In addition to VeriSign and CORE, the other bidders announced Thursday by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) included NeuStar, manager of .BIZ TLD. NeuStar has teamed up with the Japan Registry Services Co. The other two bidders, as expected, were Germany's Denic eG, and Afilias, which administers the .info TLD. CORE++ blindsided the competition, as it had not telegraphed its intention widely enough to file a bid. Based in Barcelona, CORE++ boasts an international roster, including telecommunications firm Telefonica Group, and Internet registration organizations from Korea, Brazil, and South Africa among others. CORE++ said the California-based Internet Systems Consortium, a non-profit organization, is supporting its bid. "We intend to develop the .net domain by adding value to registrars and users," said Eva Froelich, CORE++ chief coordinator, in a statement. "By operating in a far more efficient mode than the current domain registry we can reduce the cost of registering and owning .net domains while offering better protection against unintended, accidental, and fraudulent changes to domain names." Other bidders supported the idea that Web administration needs a more international and non-profit flavor. Denic, which manages Germany's 8 million registered Web users, is a non-profit group. The NeuStar bid was filed through Sentan Registry Services, which is a private for-profit joint venture of Japan Registry Service and NeuLevel Inc. Sentan noted that it is incorporated in the U.S., but will be headquartered in Tokyo. VeriSign is a for-profit company and its management of the Internet's TLDs has been very profitable. In addition, to .net, VeriSign manages .com, which is by far the largest TLD. The company is betting that its longtime administration of 18 domain sites around the world and its longtime record of keeping its TLDs up and running, will help it retain management of .net. VeriSign is supported in its bid by many major high technology firms including Microsoft, MCI and Sun Microsystems.
.NET Bid Contenders
CircleID.com,
19.01.2005
Frakes, Jothan
Yesterday was the deadline for the submissions of responses to the .NET re-bid RFP. As of my last count, there are five companies that I am aware of that submitted proposals for the .NET rebid. Three of these were quite publicly announced, Afilias, Denic, and Verisign. The other two bidders are Multi-Stakeholder groups. Sentan and Core++. Sentan appears to be a Joint Venture between .jp and Neulevel, and Core++ is ISC, Telfonica, and .br, with participation from Core, Nida (.kr), and .zaDNA (.za). These are all strong players with what I am sure are very compelling proposals, and it will be interesting to see how this unfolds. Here is the description of the next phase of the process called "Evaluation and Reporting Period". (source: .NET Request for Proposals): "ICANN will select an independent third party to manage the evaluation of the .NET proposals. That entity may utilize additional independent technical and business/financial experts to carry out that evaluation. Any such experts will be selected based on their experience, talent and skills as they apply to the evaluation task as outlined in the RFP. This process will evaluate both the public and the non-public portions of the applications against the criteria in the RFP. As indicated above, the evaluators will first determine whether an applicant meets the absolute criteria set forth in this RFP. Thereafter, but only with respect to those applicants the evaluators determine have satisfied the absolute criteria, the evaluators will evaluate the applicants against the relative criteria, and will preliminarily rank the applicants from strongest to weakest based upon performance against the relative criteria. The evaluators will then prepare a preliminary written report on each applicant, noting substantive comments and questions. This written report on a given applicant will be provided privately to that applicant only, and each applicant will be given a specified number of days to respond to the report. All responses must be in writing. When the time period for responding to the evaluators' preliminary written report has expired, the evaluators will review their initial evaluation and ranking, together with the responses from the applicants, and prepare their final rankings of the applicants. The final ranking of the applicants, together with the evaluators' final written report in support of that ranking, will be provided to the ICANN Board of Directors. A redacted version of that report, with confidential information about any applicant redacted, will be posted on the ICANN website. After the posting of the evaluators' report and rankings, the applicants, the internet community and the public at large will be entitled to comment on the report, the rankings and other topics of interest to them relating to the selection of a successor .NET registry operator. Immediately following the announcement of the evaluators' final rankings, the applicant who was ranked the highest will be invited to begin intensive and speedy negotiations with ICANN on the terms of the .NET registry operator agreement. ICANN's proposed form of agreement will be posted online on or about 31 January 2005. If the highest ranking applicant and ICANN are unable to reach a mutually acceptable agreement within two weeks following the release of the rankings, then (i) ICANN will prepare for the ICANN Board a summary of the contractual points in dispute, upon which the applicant will be invited to comment prior to its submission to the ICANN Board, and (ii) the ICANN staff will immediately begin negotiations with the next highest ranked applicant with the goal of reaching an agreement (and related appendices, as appropriate) mutually acceptable to that applicant and ICANN. Each applicant should review ICANN's proposed form of agreement when it is posted, and be prepared to forward to ICANN immediately following the posting of the evaluators' final rankings the applicant's proposed changes to ICANN's form of agreement, if the applicant is the top-ranked applicant. Each applicant should also have appointed a negotiating team with the necessary authority to negotiate the agreement and be prepared, if that applicant is the top ranked applicant, to send that team to the Los Angeles area to meet in person with ICANN's negotiating team within a few days following the release of the rankings. Negotiations over the terms of the agreement will commence immediately following ICANN's review of the top-ranked applicant's proposed changes to the agreement."
VeriSign Faces Four Contenders for .Net
eWeek.com,
19.01.2005
Four competitors are officially vying to wrest the management of the .net domain away from VeriSign Inc.
Hicks, Matt
ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, confirmed Wednesday that it had received five applications from companies wanting to run .net, the Internet's third most-popular domain. The submissions had been due by the end of Tuesday. One surprise in the submissions was an application from a little-publicized consortium calling itself the CORE++ Association. According to its Web site, the consortium comprises partners representing 16 countries and is based in Barcelona, Spain. Those backing the consortium include telecommunications company Telefonica Group; CORE, an association of registrars and registries that runs back-end services for the .aero and .museum domains; the Internet Systems Consortium Inc.; the National Internet Development Agency of Korea, which manages the .kr country code; a division of the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee called NICBR; and the .za DNA (Domain Name Authority) in South Africa. As reported earlier, VeriSign is bidding to maintain its .net registry role. VeriSign, of Mountain View, Calif., gained control of .net in 2000 when it acquired Network Solutions Inc., and Network Solutions had run the domain since 1992. The other contenders include a German nonprofit, DENIC eG, which manages the world's most-popular country code, Germany's .de. Also in the running are Afilias Ltd. and NeuLevel Inc., two registries that run the generic domain names .info and .biz, respectively. NeuLevel is proposing to manage .net in a joint venture with Japan Registry Services Co. Ltd., which operates Japan's .jp country code. The venture is being called Sentan Registry Services Inc., and NeuLevel would act as the major provider of technical services for Sentan, NeuLevel announced. VeriSign's contract to run .net ends June 30, and ICANN plans to choose a .net operator in March. ICANN expects to post the public portions of the .net bids to its Web site later this week, a spokesman said. ICANN also plans to pick an outside auditing or consulting firm to manage the evaluation of the submissions, largely to avoid an appearance of a conflict of interest. VeriSign and ICANN are embroiled in a legal dispute, in which VeriSign is accusing the domain-name overseer of overstepping its role as a technical body.
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