ICANN in Hot Seat over .net Registry Report
April 2005
A report recommending that VeriSign is well
positioned to remain in charge of the ".net"
domain name registries is coming under repeated
criticism, as the Internet's international
governing body finds itself in the eye of yet
another controversy.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and
Numbers Latest News about Internet Corporation for
Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) received a
report earlier this week from a consulting firm
hired to determine what vendor had the best
infrastructure in placed to handle the
registration oversight.
'Sloppy' Work Alleged
The report scored VeriSign higher than all four
other bidders for the work in many of the 14
categories it examined. The report was conducted
by Telcordia Technologies.
Earlier in the week, Germany-based Denic, one of
the other four firms vying with VeriSign for the
right to control the domain, slammed the report,
saying it was "sloppy" work replete with "serious
factual errors" that led to mistaken conclusions.
One drawback cited in the report by the reviewers
was that Denic uses a proprietary software system
to operate its domains; Denic says that's not the
case and provided evidence to that effect to ICANN.
More recently, the chairman of an internal ICANN
committee that established the methodology for the
report added his voice to the din, citing a
"serious flaw in the methodology."
In a note to an ICANN mailing list, technical
committee head Philip Sheppard said Telcordia
"used a scoring system which was biased towards
multiple technical criteria" rather than using
competition as a key factor, as the committee that
launched the review had ordered.
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