Re: [DNSOP] Please review and provide feedback -- draft-stw-6761ext

[Ted Lemon <[e-mail]>]

On Aug 26, 2019, at 6:03 AM, Vittorio Bertola <vittorio.bertola=[e-mail]> wrote:
> This is also why not having a registry under .alt makes sense. Having one would make .alt second-level domains almost a functional duplicate of special use TLDs, raising the bar to get them and making special use TLDs only better in vanity/shortness, which would lead the IETF to have to deal mostly with vanity TLD applications.

This isn’t really true.   The main problem with special-use top-level names is that it’s not clear what the process is for assigning them.   The IETF can’t just unilaterally assign them, because we don’t own the namespace.   We sort of have a right to allocate them, but if we do, we have to liaise with ICANN, and we don’t have a process for that.  So every time we do it, it’s a special case.  This makes the IETF leadership understandably reluctant to do it, which means that anybody who wants one can expect it to be a long process with no guarantee of a positive outcome.   This is discussed at length in RFC 8244.

So a TLD that is especially intended for non-DNS special-use names and that is entirely owned by the IETF would in fact be quite a bit easier to use, and we could have an allocation process that did not discourage casual use.

If we want both types of special-use TLD, we could easily have .arc and .adhoc to cover both use cases.   .arc would have a registry; .adhoc would not.