To the hordes looking for an appropriate Net name, the "name space" of dot com just isn't enough. Volunteer organizations aren't waiting for ICANN to map out a plan and are busy readying alternatives.
"The name space has to be able to differentiate between what people want, so conflicts don't happen," said Simon Higgs of SuperRoot. "And they only way to do that is to introduce new top-level domains."
Higgs is a co-founder of SuperRoot, one of a knot of domain system specialists with plans to see that dot com becomes just one of many categories of Internet name endings. With or without ICANN's help.
SuperRoot is trying to establish an alternative system. Then, if push comes to shove and ICANN doesn't satisfy the demand for new names, that system would actually become an alternative "root server" for the domain name system (DNS).
SuperRoot is actually one of several alternative "root zones" in the works. Others with similar goals include the ORSC Root and the International Root Service Confederation, operated out of Australia.
As Higgs suggests, the issue that these groups are trying to resolve is one of the Net's longest running, and most controversial, debates.
The sheer number of businesses and organizational titles simply can't be supported by one dominant category, the argument goes. Thus, a variety of stakeholders in the offline and online world have been fighting since 1996 to enter new top-level domains into the root server system.
