A Dutch technology company has introduced a fresh perspective on the campaign to eliminate current Internet suffixes such as .com, replacing them instead with country names, company names, or any interesting term.
This system allows nations, companies, and individuals to own addresses that contain proper names, promoting flexibility and independence in language and characters. “The goal of the project is to provide domain names in any character set,” stated Erik Seeboldt, CEO of UnifiedRoot based in Amsterdam.
UnifiedRoot is developing an unlimited suffix set, contrasting significantly with the current limited list. “We have received thousands of registrations each day,” Seeboldt noted after the company launched operations with 13 root servers of the Internet domain name system installed across four continents.
UnifiedRoot has signed contracts with most Internet service providers in Turkey. Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport is also among its earliest clients. The registration fee for a suffix is $1,000, plus an annual subscription fee of $240. Companies can then creatively come up with other optional website addresses based on the top-level domain (TLD), such as flights.schiphol or parking.schiphol…
Many critics argue that companies like UnifiedRoot could cause confusion in web traffic management. The current address system is identified only by certain computers, under the oversight of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). ICANN also has the authority to determine which root servers are allowed to recognize which top-level domains.
“Those who believe they can add new top-level domains or suffixes are essentially copyright violators,” Paul Vixie, a member of the ICANN board, remarked.
At the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) 2005 conference held in Tunisia from November 16 to 18, several countries expressed their desire to strip ICANN of its governing power, but the United States refused to concede.
