Contrast Beckstrom's interview with DelBianco's Argument Against New TLDs

[Alex Gakuru]

Competition is expected to lower domain prices thus benefit consumers,
but would you know of any studies that provide empirical "real cost"
of a creating a domain record at the registry?
I suppose you already knew about "The True Price of SMS Messages"
http://gthing.net/the-true-price-of-sms-messages.

Important to relate prices charged with absolutes costs incurred to
help me understand why many individuals in African opt for much
cheaper gTLDs that to register their ccTLDs due to the high prices
charged by their local registries.

And exposing telcos colluding to fix internet connectivity prices
"..shareholders are making a massive 2,000 per cent from selling their
capacity before the cable officially goes live. The shareholders have
said that they will first have to recoup their investment before
lowering the internet connectivity prices."
http://www.nation.co.ke/business/news/-/1006/665950/-/iftwapz/-/index.html

Regards,

Alex

On Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 3:06 PM, Jorge Amodio <jmamodio at gmail.com> wrote:
> Good observations Alex. IMHO, I believe that there are confusing statements
> regarding the implementation of new gTLDs given the fact that nobody can
> provide a concrete and concise answer to some questions.
>
> There are still many open issues and a lot of pressure from folks promoting
> many of the new gTLDs since the window of opportunity and speculation
> about the potential ROI may be closing, and some folks eager to put money
> may be rethinking if its worth the investment or not.
>
> About competition and the real need for new gTLDs there are valid arguments
> from both sides, but they are not 100% convincing.
>
> Many of the studies associated with this program should have been done
> before we started writing the DAG.
>
> From the technical side, besides taking a closer look at the current
> implementation of the root zone, how the changes being introduced to the
> DNS (such as DNSSEC, IPv6, IDN) will impact the overall system and
> not just the root zone or primary servers.
>
> In my opinion (I'm still reviewing and analyzing them) both scalability
> studies of the root zone, while well done, are not 100% conclusive but
> they (including the L-root server scalability test bed) all call for a more
> quantitative analysis of the entire system.
>
> During the "proof of concept" phase when new TLDs where introduced
> we missed the opportunity to establish a common set of metrics and
> start collecting this data as a baseline before the introduction of the
> TLDs. All reports about expanding the root zone call again for a
> system to collect this data and review the effects of the introduction
> of any changes to the DNS.
>
> Scaling hardware and software on the server side is not a big issue
> (the L-root server exercise has very good numbers regarding
> performance impact and among other things server memory
> requirements), scaling processes and people its more complex.
>
> Connectivity may become something to keep an eye on, due the
> increased sizes of query responses, DNS clients where latency is
> high and/or the path can't accommodate the new size of the UDP
> datagrams carrying the response, will revert (after a certain delay)
> to TCP, this has some side effects like adding the TCP handshake
> for each single transaction, increased time for a name to be
> resolved, extra traffic and increased memory usage both on the
> client and on the server side.
>
> Then, as the AoC says, "if and when" new gTLDs are introduced
> we need to keep an eye on the performance and behavior of the
> entire system, but also review if the the introduction of a new
> gTLD has promoted competence, consumer choice, etc, as
> stated on 9.3 of the AoC.
>
> Other open issues, as you know the IRT has been dumped and
> reaching consensus on that front will take a big effort and extra
> time.
>
> Personally, I'm not a big fan of the gTLD program, but I'm not
> opposed to the creation of new TLDs if it's done gradually, and
> without the pressure from speculators that only see how much
> money they will potentially make out of vaporware.
>
> My .02
> Jorge
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 3:08 AM, Alex Gakuru <gakuru at gmail.com> wrote:
>> ...
>> As for the generic top level domains, there's still a range of
>> opinion. They are a little more complex, because there will never be a
>> solution that suits everyone - we're doing it to create competition,
>> and the people who don't want more competition don't like it. But we
>> are moving forward with an aggressive time frame.
>>
>> Nevali: What's the benefit of gTLDs? Why doesn't Icann forget about
>> expanding the number of top-level domains and just oversee what the
>> country code administrators are doing?
>>
>> RB: The owners of those country codes already have the power to do
>> pretty much anything they want. But it's not an answer because if you
>> open up the root, you open up new gTLDs anyway. It's in our mandate to
>> create new top level domains, so we're doing the right thing - but
>> it's a very difficult problem.
>>
>> EllyD: How is Icann trying to improve the arbitration process for
>> victims of domain theft?
>>
>> RB: We are proposing a new mechanism - uniform rapid suspension. There
>> is a proposal and we're deliberating it.
>>
>> <http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/oct/02/rod-beckstrom-questions>
>>
>> and
>>
>> 2. 'In Congress, A Confusing Argument Against New TLDs'
>>
>> <http://www.circleid.com/posts/in_congress_a_confusing_argument_against_new_tlds/>
>>
>