A Kink in .Travel Plans

November 2004

Robert Arbogast is one of many alternative domain name owners who are just now finding out their years-long investment in .travel might come to an end after a recent decision by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

Arbogast, the owner of www.tickets.travel on New.net's alternative domain name service, might soon be dealing with a second .travel dealer now that ICANN is entering technical and commercial negotiations with the company for the .travel sponsored top-level domain (sTLD) Thursday.

The domain space, if approved by the Internet governing body, will be the seventh sTLD approved to run alongside the popular .com, .net and .org generic TLDs (gTLDs), opening up the congested name space market to new entrants.

However, ICANN's decision is bad news for the approximately 175 million Internet users who use New.net software to resolve domain names on their Web browsers.