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PUERTO RICO - The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which manages the Internet's domain-name address system, said on Friday it was on track to allow an expanded number of domain names next year.
ICANN officials, wrapping up a week-long meeting in Puerto Rico, said their goal was to have in place by next year a permanent process to allow for new, generic top-level domain names, as well as to begin "internationalising" domain names.
Top-level domain names, or TLDs, refer to Internet name suffixes, such as the ubiquitous .com, .net and .org, among others. There are more than 200 TLDs, which also include the two-character country codes used by Web sites.
"With the progress we've made is San Juan, we're on track for the new applications and approvals policy to be ready for the start of 2008 and the introduction of new TLDs by mid-year," said Dr. Paul Twomey, president and chief executive of ICANN.
The California-based non-profit organisation oversaw two previous extensions of Internet space: the addition of seven TLDS, including .info and .name in 2000, and the addition of another six starting in 2004.
It recently denied a petition to include .xxx as a TLD to be used for pornographic Web sites.
Current plans call for a quick approval process for suffix names that raise no objections. More controversial applications would require additional review.
The group is also working to expand the number of characters that can be used to create Internet addresses, currently limited to the 26 Roman characters, 10 numerals and the hyphen. This would allow the use of Arabic, Chinese and a multitude of other characters to be used in domain names.
While foreign characters can sometimes be used as a part of an Internet address, the three-letter suffixes are confined to Roman characters.
There are technical and policy challenges the group is working on to begin the internationalisation process, said Dr. Vint Cerf, ICANN chairman.
For example, many foreign-language characters look exactly alike, so the group will have to establish rules to determine who gets to use such characters. Other characters might resemble computer software code and could impair functioning.
"The important thing is that whatever you call a domain name, it works exactly the same anywhere in the world," Cerf said.
Twomey said live tests on international domain names would take place in November.
ICANN also held discussions to improve its oversight of registrars, private companies which enter agreements with ICANN to sell domain names.
Currently, ICANN can only eliminate an agreement with a registrar if it finds it has incurred violations. It wants to modify its agreement structure to allow for a greater array of sanctions.
The issue has taken on urgency since the group recently had to strip RegisterFly of its accreditation due to poor service, which impacted thousands of its users.
Some 1,000 participants from more than 115 countries participated in the San Juan meeting, the second of the group's three public meetings this year. The next takes place in Los Angeles in November.
- REUTERS
