The Net's future technical managers inched closer Wednesday to agreeing on a new organizational body that will look after the Net's naming system.
At a meeting in Singapore, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers board of directors continued honing a proposal regarding the makeup of the Domain Name Supporting Organization.
"There were some substantial compromises," said a spokesman for ICANN chairwoman Esther Dyson. "But in the end the board is going to have to make some decisions of its own to foster a compromise ... structure that will, one way or another, include almost all of the groups and individuals involved."
The board and other attendees, including domain name registrar groups, are trying to agree on a new proposal, referred to as "Singapore." That document would establish ground rules for the nascent Net name-registration industry.
ICANN's Domain Name Supporting Organization will determine policy on top-level domain administration and registrars. Top-level domains, which currently include those that end in .com and .org, will eventually be extended to include alternates such as .biz.
The group will create guidelines for companies wanting to operate new domains. A "name council" will approve the new domains and oversee their operation and management.
"At the end of the day, we agreed to submit this new annotated document to the ICANN board for consideration," said Bret Fausett of the Association of Internet Professionals, via a DNSO discussion mailing list. "It was not meant to be a new proposal, but rather a road map to help the ICANN board understand where the two groups had shared beliefs."
The board seems to believe that it has all of the information it needs to make a decision on the Domain Name Supporting Organization, he said.
A final vote could come as early as Thursday.
