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| Signposts in Cyberspace: The Domain Name System and Internet Navigation
(2005) Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB) |
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The following HTML text is provided to enhance online readability. Many aspects of typography translate only awkwardly to HTML. Please use the page image as the authoritative form to ensure accuracy. Executive SummaryMost people who use the Internet rely on the Domain Name System (DNS) and navigation aids and services to find the resources they seek or to attract users to the resources they provide. Yet, although they perform well, both the DNS and Internet navigation services face challenges arising from technological change and from institutions with a wide variety of commercial, cultural, social, and political agendas. Individually, or together, those pressures could force operational changes that would significantly reduce access to Internet-linked resources by segments of the user community, reducing the Internet’s value as a global resource. This document reports the conclusions of an assessment of the current state and the future prospects of the DNS and its interactions with Internet navigation, including its uses as a means of navigation itself and as an infrastructure for navigation by other means. The assessment is the result of the deliberations of a committee that encompasses a wide range of disciplines, experience, and viewpoints. The report is addressed to the technologists, policy makers, and others whose decisions will affect the future of the DNS and Internet navigation aids and services. The specific conclusions and recommendations of the Committee on Internet Navigation and the Domain Name System appear throughout this summary in boldface type. DOMAIN NAME SYSTEMDomain names are commonly used to designate services and devices on the Internet, as a more memorable and more permanent alternative to |
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OCR for page 1
Signposts in
Cyberspace: The Domain Name System and Internet Navigation Executive
Summary Most people who use the Internet rely on the Domain Name System
(DNS) and navigation aids and services to find the resources they seek
or to attract users to the resources they provide. Yet, although they
perform well, both the DNS and Internet navigation services face
challenges arising from technological change and from institutions with
a wide variety of commercial, cultural, social, and political agendas.
Individually, or together, those pressures could force operational
changes that would significantly reduce access to Internet-linked
resources by segments of the user community, reducing the Internet’s
value as a global resource. This document reports the conclusions of an
assessment of the current state and the future prospects of the DNS and
its interactions with Internet navigation, including its uses as a
means of navigation itself and as an infrastructure for navigation by
other means. The assessment is the result of the deliberations of a
committee that encompasses a wide range of disciplines, experience, and
viewpoints. The report is addressed to the technologists, policy
makers, and others whose decisions will affect the future of the DNS
and Internet navigation aids and services. The specific conclusions and
recommendations of the Committee on Internet Navigation and the Domain
Name System appear throughout this summary in boldface type. DOMAIN
NAME SYSTEM Domain names are commonly used to designate services and
devices on the Internet, as a more memorable and more permanent
alternative to
OCR for page 2
Signposts in
Cyberspace: The Domain Name System and Internet Navigation the
numerical addresses employed by its routing computers. They are the
valued, often valuable, and often user-friendly names on the signposts
that designate many things connected to the Internet. Consequently,
which names are available, who controls their allocation, what is
charged for their use, how their uses are managed, and the answers to
many related questions are important to virtually everyone who uses the
Internet, whether as information seeker or provider. Overall, the DNS’s
technical system and institutional framework have performed reliably
and effectively during the two decades of the DNS’s existence. The DNS
has coped with the extremely rapid expansion of Internet usage driven
by the wide deployment of the World Wide Web in the 1990s and the
widespread adoption of e-mail. The hierarchical, distributed structure
of the DNS technical system, operated collaboratively by a group of
mostly autonomous organizations, has proven to be scalable, reliable,
secure, and efficient. The DNS technical system can continue to meet
the needs of an expanding Internet. Early in the committee’s assessment
it became apparent that it would not be fruitful to consider alternate
naming systems. As noted, the DNS operates quite well for its intended
purpose and has demonstrated its ability to scale with the growth of
the Internet and to operate robustly in an open environment. Moreover,
significantly increased functionality can be achieved though
applications—such as navigation systems—built on the DNS, or offered
independently, rather than through changing the DNS directly. Hence,
the need did not seem to be to replace the DNS, but rather to maintain
and incrementally improve it. Furthermore, given the rapidly increasing
installed base and the corresponding heavy investments in the technical
system and the institutional framework, the financial cost and
operational disruption of replacing the DNS would be extremely high, if
even possible at all. However, the continued successful operation of
the DNS is not assured; many forces, driven by a variety of factors,
are challenging the DNS’s future. Required and desirable technologies
to increase security and enable the use of non-Roman scripts for domain
names are not being incorporated into the technical system as quickly
as many would like. There are persistent and substantial controversies
concerning the structure and policies of the DNS’s institutional
framework. Moreover, there have been many efforts to use the DNS,
because it exists and is so widely deployed, for many purposes for
which it may not be appropriate. In addition, national legislation and
court decisions are addressing Internet and domain name issues with
potentially conflicting consequences for the operation of the DNS.
OCR for page 3
Signposts in
Cyberspace: The Domain Name System and Internet Navigation Security
Challenges Like all public networked systems, the system of public
domain name servers is threatened by a variety of purposeful attacks,
both malicious and mischievous, by individuals or groups that aim to
disable or divert their operations. The operators of the DNS are
responding to these threats, but not all the desirable steps to ensure
security have yet been implemented. Denial-of-Service Attacks
Denial-of-service attacks attempt to overwhelm key name servers and
their links to the Internet with so much traffic that they are
incapable of responding to legitimate queries. The root name servers
have the capacity and capability to respond to many times the normal
number of queries they receive, and have alternate connections to the
network if some are blocked. Their ability to respond to attacks has
been improved by some operators’ recent addition of multiple
distributed copies (called “anycast” servers) of the base name servers,
increasing both capacity and connectivity. In anticipation of future
denial-of-service attacks and normal growth in demand, and to improve
service globally, anycast server deployment should be expanded.
Physical Vulnerability Notwithstanding the deployment of anycast
servers and installation of backup servers at remote locations, the
concentration of root name server facilities and personnel in the
Washington, D.C., area and, to a lesser extent, in the Los Angeles area
is a potential vulnerability. The need for further diversification of
the location of root name servers and personnel should be carefully
analyzed in the light of possible dangers, both natural and human in
origin. Message Alteration In response to the threat of alteration of
messages being transmitted among name servers, the technical community
has developed DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC), which uses digital
signatures to verify that the content of a message to or from a name
server arrives unaltered and that its origin is as stated. DNSSEC only
gives assurance that what was sent was not changed during transmission;
it cannot and is not intended to assert that the message is factually
correct. For example, DNSSEC has no
OCR for page 4
Signposts in
Cyberspace: The Domain Name System and Internet Navigation capability
to guarantee that it is communicating the correct address for a given
domain name. The security of the DNS would be significantly improved if
DNSSEC were widely deployed among name servers for the root zone and
top-level domains in particular, and throughout the DNS in general.
Performance Monitoring Although some steps have been taken, more could
be done to continuously monitor the performance and traffic flows of
the DNS so as to enable rapid detection of and response to attacks or
outages. Governance Challenges The DNS works through the voluntary
cooperation of its autonomous component entities. That cooperation, in
turn, depends on their tacit agreement on two principles that together
enable the Internet and the DNS to evolve and remain effective:
Universal open standards. The first principle is that the protocols and
standards defining operation of the Internet and the DNS will be open
and established by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), an
international voluntary organization of technical specialists. This
technical framework enables every device on the Internet to connect to
and communicate with every other, and it has been critical to the
success of the Internet and the DNS. Because changes in Internet and
DNS protocols, standards, and practices are matters of consequence
beyond specific Internet services, alterations to the functions of or
modifications to established standards and practices have traditionally
been vetted by the IETF before being implemented. Innovation at the
edges. The second principle is that applications should be offered by
devices on the edges of the Internet, rather than at the Internet’s
internal nodes or on its links. In general, applications located at the
edges have little effect on the stability of the Internet, so there is
no need to regulate them. The DNS is not, strictly speaking, internal
to the Internet (the translation service is performed by computers at
the edges), but functions as though it were. It can thus be thought of
as a core service, which although not absolutely necessary, is
extremely useful in giving a relatively user-friendly face to Internet
resources, and for enabling access to those resources even when their
Internet addresses change. Moreover, it is a deeply embedded and
ubiquitous service that enables other services and functions, including
most aids to Internet navigation.
OCR for page 5
Signposts in
Cyberspace: The Domain Name System and Internet Navigation This tacit
agreement governs the basic behavior of the many autonomous operators
of the DNS, but there is also a need for an authority to make decisions
about the allocation of limited resources central to DNS operations.
The most critical of these decisions are the determination of which
top-level domains (TLDs) shall appear in the root zone file of the DNS,
which organizations shall be designated as responsible for their
operation, and the terms under which those organizations shall operate.
The principal organizations that constitute this authority are,
currently, the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) and the Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), although national
bodies have considerable influence over the operations of the
associated country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs). Both the DOC and
ICANN face significant challenges to their authority and legitimacy in
management of the DNS. Stewardship of the DNS As the Internet has
become an increasingly important component of the international
infrastructure, there has been growing pressure to introduce some form
of international political control over the DNS. This pressure comes
both from existing international organizations seeking authority over
the Internet or the DNS, and from individual countries that would like
to end the stewardship role of the United States. Governance of the DNS
is part, but not all, of governing the Internet. Efforts to leverage it
to influence broader Internet policy are, therefore, likely to be
ineffective and could also be detrimental to the DNS. Many of the
governance issues that concern governments—control of spam and uses of
the Internet for illegal purposes; resolving the disparities between
developed and developing countries in Internet usage; protection of
privacy, freedom of expression, and intellectual property other than
domain names; and the facilitation and regulation of e-commerce—have
little or nothing to do with the DNS per se. The DNS would not be an
effective vehicle for addressing such issues. Attempts to change the
DNS or extend its management and administrative processes to do so
could interfere with reaching agreements on the already contentious
issues concerning the DNS itself. Governance of the DNS is not an
appropriate venue for the playing out of national political interests.
One valued and essential quality of the DNS institutional framework has
been its relative freedom from direct pressures arising from conflicts
among competing national interests and policy agendas (apart from
sovereignty-associated issues such as ccTLD delegations and
redelegations). International disputes arising in other contexts have
largely been kept away from the DNS—as they should be. For that reason:
The committee does not support efforts to put the
OCR for page 6
Signposts in
Cyberspace: The Domain Name System and Internet Navigation DNS directly
under the control of governments or intergovernmental agencies. In
practical terms, the U.S. government, which must agree, has not
supported turning DNS stewardship over to other governments or an
international organization, although that could change. Although the
2005 U.N.-sponsored World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) may
produce proposals for a non-governmental agent—an internationally
negotiated convention or multi-stakeholder organization—with oversight
or other influence over the DNS, no proposal that can be evaluated for
either practicality or feasibility has yet (in June 2005) been made.
One way to respond to concerns about the U.S. government’s role as
steward of the DNS is for it to transfer its stewardship role to a
non-governmental body—specifically, ICANN. In the September 2003
revision of its agreement with ICANN, the DOC stated its intent to
transfer its stewardship to ICANN if within 3 years ICANN is able to
fulfill a mutually agreed set of tasks. If ICANN does not fulfill the
agreed tasks, and a proposal for creation of a non-governmental
organization having Internet governance responsibilities results from
the WSIS process before the transfer date, the DOC could consider
transferring the stewardship role to the proposed organization. That
would entail comparing a not-yet-existing organization to one with 8
years of experience and evolution. Life without the stewardship of the
U.S. government will open ICANN to political and commercial pressures.
A free-standing ICANN would lack the oversight and, importantly, the
protection provided by the U.S. government’s stewardship. If ICANN
becomes steward of the DNS, legitimacy based on the “consent of the
governed” would be the principal basis for its continued authority and
its ability to resist inappropriate pressure from governments and other
powerful interests. Final responsibility for satisfying the needs of
its constituencies in an equitable, open, and efficient manner would
lie with its board. Before completing the transfer of its stewardship
to ICANN (or any other organization), the Department of Commerce should
seek ways to protect that organization from undue commercial or
governmental pressures and to provide some form of oversight of
performance. Legitimacy of ICANN ICANN is a work in progress; its
long-term success is not assured. After a troubled start, it has
introduced several innovations to the institutional framework of the
DNS, including competition among registrars and an arbitral process for
resolving disputes over domain names, the Uniform Domain Name Dispute
Resolution Policy. In 2003 it had to undertake a major reform of its
own organization, stimulated by dissatisfaction with its operation
under its initial structure. It is working on the revision of key
decision
OCR for page 7
Signposts in
Cyberspace: The Domain Name System and Internet Navigation processes in
response to complaints about their lack of transparency and fairness.
Furthermore, ICANN has been unable to conclude formal agreements with
many of the organizations critical to its responsibilities, notably the
root name server operators and the vast majority of the ccTLD
registries. Nevertheless, through its responsibility for recommending
changes in the root zone file, which defines which TLDs are in the DNS
and where their operators are located on the Internet, ICANN has been
able to exercise authority over the coherence and stability of the DNS.
Since its beginning, ICANN has been the subject of controversy and
contention flowing from the many diverse constituencies that have been
attracted to it and their correspondingly diverse views. The critics’
concerns have been with ICANN’s scope, its organizational structure,
and its management processes. The concern about scope has been
principally the extent to which ICANN has exceeded its
technical-administrative responsibilities, for example, to regulate TLD
registry operations; but others have been disappointed by its
unwillingness to take on broader issues. The structural concerns have
included perceptions of imbalance in the historical composition of
ICANN’s board, of failings in the board selection processes, and of
inadequate representation of certain constituency groups. The process
concerns have been the perceived lack of transparency, effectiveness,
accountability, and recourse in ICANN’s electoral and decision
processes. ICANN is more likely to achieve perceived legitimacy by
narrowing its scope and by improving its processes rather than by
seeking an ideally representative composition of its board. No
composition of its board is likely by itself to confer the perception
of legitimacy on ICANN among all its possible constituency groups. A
narrowing of scope and improvement of processes are elements of the
path that ICANN claims to be following in carrying out its 2003 reform.
However successful its reform, ICANN faces the challenge of reaching an
effective modus operandi with three critical sets of participants in
the DNS’s institutional framework: the root name server operators, the
generic TLD registries, and the ccTLD registries. Root Name Server
Operators No greater oversight of the root name server operators will
be necessary so long as they continue to operate effectively and
reliably and to improve the DNS’s security, stability, and capability.
The effective daily operation of the root, and therefore the DNS, lies
in the hands of the operators of the 13 critical root name servers.
They have provided reliable and efficient service as the Internet has
undergone rapid growth in the numbers of its users and providers.
Although the DOC has assigned ICANN responsibility for the stability
and security of the root name server system, ICANN’s authority has not
been sufficient for it to manage or regulate the root name
OCR for page 8
Signposts in
Cyberspace: The Domain Name System and Internet Navigation server
operators directly, nor is it clear that doing so is desirable or
necessary. The real challenge to ICANN is to identify how it can best
ensure the stability and security of the root name server system, given
the long-standing autonomy of the operators and the effectiveness of
their operations. More formal coordination of the root name server
operators is desirable in the longer term. ICANN is currently the most
appropriate organization to assume the coordination role. Although
direct management or oversight may be neither necessary nor feasible,
with continued growth in the Internet and demands on the DNS, a more
formal process of coordination of the root name server operators with
ICANN’s facilitation will become desirable so as to ensure rapid
response to persistent security needs and to other challenges. The
present independent funding arrangements for the root name servers are
advantageous and should continue, because the multiplicity of sources
contributes to the resilience, autonomy, and diversity of the root name
server system. The root name server operators do not receive direct
compensation for the services they perform. While running a root server
may only add an incremental cost in the range of tens of thousands of
dollars for an organization already operating a secure Internet site,
fully loaded costs have been estimated at up to $1 million or more
depending on numerous factors including the number of locations,
bandwidth requirements, and staffing levels. The costs are covered by
each organization as part of other operations. Although a central
source of funds to compensate all the root name server operators for
their services might appear desirable, it is likely to be accompanied
by an unacceptable regulatory or control role for the funding
organization and would reduce the robustness of the current
arrangement. ICANN should work with the root name server operators to
establish a formal process for replacing operators that directly
engages the remaining root name server operators. Under the process,
ICANN would be responsible for the final decision on the basis of
recommendations from the root name server operators. One or more of the
current root name server operators may withdraw for organizational or
performance reasons, and it would be reasonable to have in place an
agreed process to deal with such eventualities. Generic Top-Level
Domain Registries A major challenge to ICANN since its founding has
been deciding whether, when, and how to add generic top-level domains
(gTLDs) and, if any are added, how many. It has faced strong pressures
both to add gTLDs and to stop, or at least moderate, the pace of such
additions. The committee addressed the issue of gTLD addition broadly
in terms of both
OCR for page 9
Signposts in
Cyberspace: The Domain Name System and Internet Navigation effects and
constituencies affected, but for simplicity the multidimensional
arguments for and against new gTLDs were clustered into two groups:
technical and operational performance, and user needs and economic
benefits. Considering technical and operational performance alone, the
addition of tens of gTLDs per year for several years poses minimal risk
to the stability of the root. However, an abrupt increase
(significantly beyond this rate) in the number of gTLDs could have
technical, operational, economic, and service consequences that could
affect domain name registrants, registries, registrars, and Internet
users. From the standpoint of user needs and economic benefits, neither
the arguments in favor of nor those against additional gTLDs are
conclusive. Thus, the decision to add gTLDs is one requiring judgment
and cannot be determined by formal analysis alone. If new gTLDs are
added, they should be added on a regular schedule that establishes the
maximum number of gTLDs (on the order of tens per year) that could be
added each time and the interval between additions. Addition of gTLDs
should be carried out cautiously and predictably, so that on the one
hand, the stability and reliability of the system can be protected, and
on the other hand, those considering acquiring a gTLD can do so with a
realistic view of future prospects. A mechanism to suspend the addition
of gTLDs in the event that severe technical or operational problems
arise should accompany a schedule of additions. It should explicitly
specify who has the authority to suspend additions and under what
conditions. A neutral, disinterested party should conduct an evaluation
of new gTLDs approximately 1 or 2 years after each set of new gTLDs is
operational to make recommendations for improving the process for
selecting and adding gTLDs. If new gTLDs are to be created, the
currently employed comparative hearing or expert evaluation processes
should not be assumed to be the only processes for selecting their
operators. In its addition of gTLDs in 2000, ICANN used a comparative
hearing process to select 7 from the 44 applicants. In its 2004
addition of sponsored gTLDs, ICANN used a non-competitive process that
replaces subjective judgments by its staff and board with judgments by
expert groups that are insulated from lobbying, but whose
decision-making processes are not transparent. By doing so, it has
reduced a few of the potential sources of dissatisfaction with the
resultant selections compared with the process used in 2000. However,
the question remains as to whether it is necessary for ICANN to qualify
new gTLDs, as this process does, on such matters as sponsorship by a
community, business and financial plans, and addition of new value to
the name space.
OCR for page 10
Signposts in
Cyberspace: The Domain Name System and Internet Navigation For creation
of new gTLDs, ICANN should consider alternate processes that are less
reliant on expert, staff, or board judgments. One such approach would
be pre-qualification of applicants only on technical capability, basic
financial viability, and adherence to registrant protection standards
and ICANN policies. (ICANN should establish requirements to minimize
the dangers of domain name registrants losing their service—and the
value invested in their domains—if a registry fails and should
carefully consider possible side effects.) If the number of qualified
applicants turns out to be less than the number of available slots, all
would be chosen; if not, a market-based selection process—an
auction—could be used to select among them. Because of the wide range
of intents and corresponding designs of such processes, they must be
carefully planned, drawing on the breadth of previous experience in the
design of auctions. Country-Code Top-Level Domain Registries Resolution
of ICANN’s role vis-á-vis the ccTLDs is one of the critical challenges
to establishing an ICANN that is viewed as a legitimate and appropriate
steward for the DNS. Although the ccTLDs represent 243 of the 258 TLDs,
ICANN had formal agreements with only a dozen of the ccTLD operators as
of June 2005. The ccTLDs as a group now operate only partially under
the oversight of any higher authority, ICANN or government. A number of
ccTLDs are overseen by their national governments; some have
established non-governmental bodies to represent the local Internet
community and exercise varying degrees of oversight; some are
completely autonomous non-profit bodies that operate voluntarily to
meet local Internet community interests; and some are commercial bodies
with some contractual linkage to the national government. The only body
that currently has an opportunity to exercise oversight over all the
ccTLDs is ICANN. The principal way in which it exercises that authority
is through recommendations to the DOC about which organization should
be delegated responsibility for a specific ccTLD. Yet this issue arises
only when the present delegatee resigns or is challenged or a new ccTLD
is established. The relationship between ccTLDs and ICANN has been
difficult from the beginning of ICANN. First, a large number of the
ccTLDs felt no need to contribute to ICANN’s budget, since they did not
think that they received any corresponding benefits. Second, many
ccTLDs resented ICANN’s major role in deciding on delegations and
redelegations—essentially a policy role that they felt would be better
performed locally. They also believed that their position as one
constituency within ICANN’s initial Domain Names Supporting
Organization, whose other constituen-
OCR for page 11
Signposts in
Cyberspace: The Domain Name System and Internet Navigation cies
primarily addressed gTLD issues, did not adequately reflect their
importance. Under its 2003 reorganization, ICANN attempted to respond
to their concerns by replacing the Domain Names Supporting Organization
with two organizations, the Generic Names Supporting Organization
(GNSO) and the Country-Code Names Supporting Organization (ccNSO).
ICANN intends thereby to draw the ccTLDs more actively into its
operations and build a stronger basis for their support. Furthermore,
in April 2005 ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee issued a revision
of its “Principles for the Delegation and Administration of Country
Code Top Level Domains” to address many of the concerns expressed about
them. If the creation of the ccNSO does not result in increased
participation by the ccTLDs in ICANN policy making, then ICANN may find
itself subject to increasing pressures to constrain its role to that of
gTLD management and root zone file record keeping and to turn ccTLD
oversight over to some other organization. The success of the ccNSO
will depend on its ability to attract an increasing number of members,
both from the large ccTLDs that are needed for financial and other
support of ICANN and the smaller ccTLDs that can benefit from the
support that ICANN could offer them. Even more critical is the
refinement of the principles and processes for delegation and
redelegation of ccTLD registries and their acceptance by most of the
ccTLDs. Commercial Challenges Perhaps the most subtle, but still
significant, challenge that the DNS faces is that arising from the
imperative faced by commercial operators of parts of the DNS—they must
strive to increase their revenues and profits in the face of
competition. On the Internet, increasing revenues generally means
increasing traffic to one’s service, sometimes by diverting it from
another operator’s service. This imperative raises the temptation to
seek traffic and revenue by breaking or bending the fabric of tacit
agreements that underlies the success of the Internet and the DNS.
ICANN should strengthen its contracts with TLD operators (especially
the largest ones) to ensure that it has the authority to review
proposed changes in their services that could have a detrimental effect
on the DNS or on other services that depend on the DNS. It should
establish an open, transparent, and speedy process of review for such
changes that solicits contributions from the technical community, other
DNS operators, other affected Internet operations, and end users. A
recent case in point is the unanticipated and unannounced introduction
by VeriSign, a commercial registry, of a service, called Site Finder,
that altered the conventional response to erroneous queries to the .com
and .net TLDs by return-
OCR for page 12
Signposts in
Cyberspace: The Domain Name System and Internet Navigation ing pointers
to its own search page, rather than sending back an error message.
After being called on by ICANN to suspend the service, VeriSign did so
under protest and is currently seeking relief in the courts. TLDs and
other DNS operators that do not have agreements with ICANN should
voluntarily agree to adhere to published technical standards and to
consult the technical community and conduct public review processes
before introducing new services that could have a detrimental effect on
the DNS or on other services that depend on the DNS. Dispute Resolution
Challenges Arbitral domain name dispute resolution processes, rather
than national courts, should continue to be encouraged as the initial
and primary vehicle for resolving most disputes associated with the
rights to domain names. The Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution
Policy was implemented by ICANN in December 1999 and has been adopted
by all registrars in nine of the generic top-level domains, as well as
voluntarily by managers of several ccTLDs. In addition, managers of
other ccTLDs have adopted their own policies based on modified versions
of the UDRP. The UDRP has generally satisfied the need for an effective
and cost-efficient means of resolving disputes concerning domain names;
however, it has weaknesses that should be addressed. The UDRP has both
positive and negative aspects, which differ, however, depending on
whether they are being considered from the perspective of the
complainants or of the respondents. Although many observers believe
that the UDRP has enabled speedy and fair resolution of domain
disputes, others believe that the current system is biased toward the
interests of trademark holders. Notwithstanding its perceived
disadvantages, by early 2005 more than 9000 decisions concerning over
15,000 domain names had been rendered under the UDRP. The feasibility
and desirability of five specific UDRP improvements should be further
considered by ICANN: Improving consistent use of arbitral precedents to
enable similar issues to be addressed in a more consistent manner that
also supports case-by-case knowledge building; Establishing an internal
appeals process that would review the small number of decisions that
are clearly faulty or that cover a situation or issue for which
competing bodies of precedent exist; Using three-member panels. Some
analyses of UDRP proceedings indicated a significant difference in
outcomes depending on whether they were heard by one-member or
three-member panels: three-member panels found for the complainant in a
smaller percentage of the cases;
OCR for page 13
Signposts in
Cyberspace: The Domain Name System and Internet Navigation Improving
panelist knowledge about the technology underlying the DNS, the uses of
domain names (beyond Web sites), and the application of the policies
and rules applicable to domain name disputes; and Improving the nature
and structure of incentives in the process. Under the current funding
structure, the revenue for panelists depends on the volume of cases,
creating incentives either for haste or for marketing strategies and
tactics to attract cases by defining lucrative niches.
Internationalization Challenges Continuing and increased attention to
internationalized domain names (IDNs) is necessary. Efforts to
coordinate work across different countries, regions, and language
groups should be undertaken to prevent the balkanization of the
Internet. Of particular interest in many countries is access to the
Internet and the DNS using home-country languages and scripts.
Unfortunately, the design of the DNS, as well as the general nature of
multiscript environments, presents formidable technical and linguistic
challenges for the accommodation of languages that use non-Roman
characters, which require compromises for their solution. Some experts
have argued for a major overhaul of the Internet’s infrastructure to
incorporate IDNs. However, pressure to act quickly reduced support for
solutions that would require extensive changes in architectures or
standards; the result was an effort led by the IETF that culminated in
the Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA) mechanism.1
The central goal of the IDNA scheme is to enable end-user viewing of
IDNs without altering the DNS protocols themselves, using a client-side
set of procedures, implemented at the edge of the DNS. However, the
IDNA mechanism solved only part of the internationalization problem.
Remaining to be addressed are the questions of potential consumer
confusion; conflict avoidance or resolution for similar-appearing
names; differences in interpretations for different languages;
restrictions on registrations on a per-domain basis; implications for
the UDRP and the Whois database (of information about domain name
registrants); security issues raised by IDNs; and the implications of
(and alternatives to) multilingual top-level domains. 1
IDNA is described in Patrik Fältström, Paul Hoffman, and Adam M.
Costello, “Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA),” RFC
3490, March 2003, available at <http://www.rfc-editor.org/>.
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Signposts in
Cyberspace: The Domain Name System and Internet Navigation INTERNET
NAVIGATION In contrast to the unique role played by the DNS, navigation
through the Internet is not supported by a unique integrated technical
system. Among the many ways to navigate the Internet, only two involve
dedicated technical systems—search engines and directories. Moreover,
the institutional framework of those technical systems is an open
market, with many, generally commercial, competitors offering
navigation services, and specialized non-commercial services focused on
non-profit resource providers and seekers. Finding and accessing a
desired resource via the Internet poses challenges that are
substantially different from the challenges in navigating to resources
in non-digital, non-networked environments. A wide range of navigation
aids and services now permit large segments of the Internet,
particularly the World Wide Web, to be traversed rapidly and
efficiently in ways previously unimaginable. They offer users across
the globe convenient access to much human knowledge and experience and
open an international audience to purveyors of content and services, no
matter where they may be located. Use of Navigation Aids and Services
Surveys indicate a high level of satisfaction with navigation aids and
services at present. An analysis of navigation behavior, based on
survey data from March 2003,2 indicates that Internet users tend to use
preferred sites and services consistently, visiting them repeatedly,
using their bookmarks or remembered Uniform Resource Locators (URLs).
Search engines produced only 13 percent of site referrals, navigation
through entry of a known or guessed URL or use of a bookmark produced
66 percent of referrals, and flow along hyperlinks produced 21 percent.
According to a recent survey,3 residents of the United States con-
2 The data were collected on March 6, 2003, by
WebSideStory’s StatMarket from about 12 million visitors to 125,000
sites using its proprietary analytical platform and were compared with
figures from the previous year. Reported in Brian Morrissey “Search
Guiding More Web Activity,” CyberAtlas, March 13, 2003, available at
<http://cyberatlas.internet.com/big_picture/traffic_patterns/article/0,1323,5931_2109221,00.html>.
3 See Deborah Fallows, Lee Rainie, and Graham Mudd. “The
Popularity and Importance of Search Engines,” data memo, Pew Internet
& American Life Project, August 2004, available at
<http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Data_Memo_Searchengines.pdf>.
The results came both from a telephone survey of 1399 Internet users
and from tracking of Internet use by comScore Media Metrix.
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Signposts in
Cyberspace: The Domain Name System and Internet Navigation ducted 3.9
billion searches in June 2004, an average of 33 searches per user.
Search engines have been used by 84 percent of U.S. residents who use
the Internet—more than 107 million people; on an average day, about 38
million of the 64 million U.S. residents who are online use a search
engine. Using search engines is second only to using e-mail as the most
popular Internet activity, except when major news stories are breaking.
A vast majority of searchers say that they find the information they
want most of the time, and more than two-thirds consider search engines
a fair and unbiased source of information. But only a third of
searchers say they could not live without search engines; about half
say that, although they like using search engines, they could go back
to other ways of finding information. As the material accessible
through the Internet continues its rapid increase in volume and variety
and as its societal importance grows, Internet navigation aids and
services are likely to be challenged to deliver more precise responses,
in more convenient forms, to more diverse questions, from more users
with widely varying skills. Efforts to improve the basic algorithms and
operations of Internet navigation services will continue because of
competitive pressures, evolving user requirements, and technological
advances. Among the specific areas where improvements are needed are
query interfaces and results displays for desktop, portable, and
collaborative devices; navigation of audio and visual materials;
management of the navigation process; use of contextual information
(while protecting privacy); and understanding the wide range of
navigation behaviors of the highly diverse users who now seek resources
on the Internet. As the Internet has become the sole or most accessible
location of many valuable resources, the importance has grown of
ensuring that they will persist indefinitely at the same URL (or in an
archive on the same site) or, alternatively, that they will be
preserved at another site where they can be readily found. Ensuring
persistence is primarily the responsibility of resource providers,
while third parties—national libraries or private organizations such as
the Internet Archive—are undertaking some preservation efforts.
Although commercial services can be expected to support substantial
research and development on these topics, academic research and
development activities have provided the innovative basic technologies
for many successful navigation aids and services. Public support of
such academic research and development efforts should be continued.
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Signposts in
Cyberspace: The Domain Name System and Internet Navigation Commercial
Navigation Services The Internet navigation services industry has
financed the development and evolution of services that meet many of
the needs of a wide range of searchers at little or no cost to them,
especially when they are seeking commercial material. At the same time,
it has provided advertisers with an efficient, cost-effective means to
gain access to potential customers at the time that they are most
interested in the advertiser’s product or service. The primary source
of income for commercial Internet navigation services is selling
advertising linked to search queries. Consequently, as for many
broadcast media, it is the content and service providers that are
subsidizing users’ access to navigation services so that they can
present advertisements to them at the time of their expressed interest
in a topic. The major search services currently identify the results
whose presentation in response to specified search terms is paid for by
advertisers (so-called sponsored links or sponsored search listings)
and set them off from the direct results of more neutral search
algorithms. As long as the distinction is clear and users are aware of
it, sponsored search listings should present few problems while
providing the great benefit of free search services to the user. The
potential for abuse exists, however. It would be possible, for example,
for a search service to accept payment for assured placement in the
“top 10” of what would appear to be a neutral listing. Should abuses
grow, search services could find themselves under increased public
pressure for government scrutiny or facing more disputes and criticism
concerning such activities from other commercial entities. None of the
navigation services have been accused of accepting payment for highly
ranked inclusion of particular responses to queries, but some have
accepted payment to ensure inclusion, but not ranking, in the otherwise
neutral listing. Furthermore, the distinct placement and typography of
the sponsored listing could be weakened to the point that a casual user
would not be aware of its difference from the neutral algorithmic
search results. Thus far, competition among services, third-party
evaluations, and the perceived value to the user of search transparency
have served as important forces constraining misbehavior of these
kinds. Although competition and the desire to be seen as useful by
searchers are incentives for fair and open behavior, appropriate
regulatory agencies of the U.S. federal government and of other
governments should pay careful and continuing attention to the result
ranking and display practices of Internet navigation services and their
advertisers to ensure that information can flow freely and that those
critical practices are fully disclosed. The behavior of commercial
navigation services can
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Signposts in
Cyberspace: The Domain Name System and Internet Navigation have a
substantial influence on the kind, quality, and appropriateness of the
information that Internet users receive. Although there is no evidence
that abuse has yet occurred, the potential for abuse is inherent in the
navigation services’ ability to affect users’ access to information for
commercial or other reasons. In the future, competition among general
navigation services is more likely to take the form of rivalry among a
small number of established large players rather than competition with
a large number of small newcomers. Over the past 4 years, there has
been considerable consolidation in the general search services market,
which reflects the increasing importance of economies of scale—the
considerable hardware and software costs of developing and operating a
search engine are independent of the number of users, whereas revenues
from advertising are directly dependent on them. The result is that the
barriers to entry are high, and only a company with substantial
financial resources and technical skills, such as Microsoft or IBM, is
in a position to introduce its own competitive general navigation
service, as Microsoft began to do in 2004. Innovation, Competition, and
Regulation The importance of the Internet as the infrastructure linking
a growing worldwide audience with an expanding array of resources means
that improving Internet navigation will remain a profitable goal for
commercial developers and a challenging and socially valuable objective
for academic researchers. Consolidation of navigation services makes it
difficult for innovative services to start small and build volume over
time unless they have a very large amount of patient investment
capital. But, so long as no single service becomes dominant, each of
the major competitors will face continuing pressure to improve its
offerings either through internal innovation or through the acquisition
of innovative small companies, paths they are currently actively
pursuing. Since competition in the market for Internet navigation
services promotes innovation, supports consumer choice, and prevents
undue control over the location of and access to the diverse resources
available via the Internet, public policies should support the
competitive marketplace that has emerged and avoid actions that damage
it. Potential rulings in some jurisdictions could substantially reduce
the abilty of search engines to sell keywords using the current
automated methods. As with the Domain Name System, the most contentious
intellectual property issues affecting navigation services concern
trademarks, specifically the sale of trademarked terms to advertisers
as keywords whose use will bring up their advertisements. Since there
is no arbitral process, such as the UDRP, by which such disputes could
be re-
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Signposts in
Cyberspace: The Domain Name System and Internet Navigation solved
outside the courts and with worldwide effect, it seems likely that
conflicting court decisions in different jurisdictions, worldwide, will
establish the potentially conflicting rules by which navigation
services will have to abide. THE DNS AND INTERNET NAVIGATION The
preservation of a stable, reliable, and effective Domain Name System
will remain crucial both to effective Internet navigation and to the
operation of the Internet and most of the applications that it
supports. Despite the differences in the way in which they developed,
the relationship between the DNS technical system and Internet
navigation aids and services is strong and fundamental—the DNS has
served as the stable core on which the incremental evolution of the
different navigation aids and services has depended. The development of
navigation services is likely to continue to relieve some of the
commercial pressures on the DNS as users become increasingly
comfortable with using them as their primary means to navigate the
Internet, but both the Domain Name System and Internet navigation aids
and services will be significant elements of the Internet for the
foreseeable future. The demonstrated success of the DNS and navigation
aids and services in meeting the basic needs of all Internet users
should not be jeopardized by efforts to constrain or direct their
evolution outside the open architecture of the Internet, or to use them
to enable control of the free flow of information across the Internet.
The governance and administration of the DNS should not become a
vehicle for addressing political, legal, or economic issues beyond
those of the DNS itself.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
internet navigation, name server, domain name, navigation services, domain names, server operators, navigation aids, name servers, search engines, institutional framework, internet users, root zone, search services, names supporting, supporting organization, name dispute, name registrants, dispute resolution, technical community, zone file, commercial navigation, internet usage, local internet, internet community, uniform domain, internationalizing domain, sponsored search, search listings, using search, dns operators
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