New Internet domain names launched

By Anand Parthasarathy

KOCHI, OCT. 1. In the biggest expansion of Internet since web addresses were first allotted in 1985, a new range of domain names became active worldwide, today.

Over half a lakh addresses, with a new ending, ``.info'', were activated over the weekend; and today after a U.S. court order, another batch with the suffix ``.biz'', became live.

Since inception, Net domain names - the unique addresses used for finding web sites - have overwhelmingly tended to end with ``.com'', followed by ``.net'' or ``.org''. These have been assigned and regulated globally by the U.S.-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), for a small fee. With the explosion of Net usage, ICANN decided, a year ago, to introduce 7 new categories:

``.info'' for general information, ``.biz'' for business, ``.pro'' for professionals such as doctors, lawyers etc., ``.aero'' for aviation industry, ``.museum'' for museum, ``.coop'' for cooperatives, ``.name'' for individuals.

The task of assigning ``.info'' names was given to a U.S.-based company, Afilias, which has allotted 52,245 names till today, many of them duplicate addresses, booked by companies already having a ``.com'' identity. Thus, www.dell.info will now take you back to www.dell.com. In all, over 250,000 applications for ``.info'' names have been received.

However, NeuLevel Inc., the company asked to assign the ``.biz'' names, was embroiled in controversy with many claimants who felt they were having to take part in an auction where the name went to the highest bidder, sometimes for thousands of dollars. Last week a Los Angeles court, allowed today's rollout of those ``.biz'' names which were uncontested, reserving judgment till October 12, on the contested names. The other five domain name types will be activated later this year.

In addition to the ``top level domain'' (TLD) names such as ``.com'' and ``.org'', country code TLD(ccTLD) names have been allocated to individual nations some years ago. In India, these have been regulated by the nodal `Indian Domain Registration Service' operated by the National Centre for Software Technology in Mumbai. It has been assigning names like ``.co.in'' for companies, ``.gov.in'' for government, ``.ac.in'' for academia, ``.net.in'' for Internet providers, etc. The service costs Rs. 1500 for the initial registration and Rs. 750 for annual renewals after two years.

There is good news for lay Indian Net users too. Last week, during the India Internet World show in Delhi, Verisign, whose acquisition of Network Solutions Inc., has made it the biggest U.S. provider of domain names, announced a tie-up with the Indian portal, Rediff.com, whereby Indians can have personalised web addresses instead of tagging their names in front of the address of the email service provider.

Thus instead of ``username@serviceprovider.com'', one can have an email address like ``myname@myname.com''.The service will be offered later this month.

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Section  : National
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