ICANN and a Changing Internet

(ImageSource: https://flic.kr/p/5kN3ek)

(This post was earlier published on SpicyIP)

Ever since Swaraj covered the new domain names being permitted by ICANN back in 2011 on SpicyIP, there have been a few quite crucial developments. Before moving on to these developments, a quick background of some relevant points.

Part I: Introduction – background 

The Domain Name System is the current back bone of accessing the internet. It essentially acts as an address book of the Internet for computers, translating human-readable website addresses such as ‘spicyip.com’ to their unique numerical IP addresses that the browser can read, thereby allowing it to access the requested content. The human readable part of a domain name is divided into two parts – the name of the website, and the ‘TLD’ that comes after it. For instance, in ‘wordpress.com’, ‘wordpress’ is the name of the website, and ‘.com’ is the ‘TLD’. A very handy guide to the Domain Name System is available here, courtesy of the Internet Society.