ICANN to prohibit nonexistent-domain redirect for new TLDs
November 29th, 2009
ICANN to prohibit nonexistent-domain redirect for new TLDs
Earlier this week, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) published a draft of an “explanatory memorandum” for a proposed clause that prohibits the managers of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) as well as IDN country code top-level domains (ccTLDs) from redirecting users when they try to access a nonexistent domain name. In 2003, Verisign, the operator of the .com and .net gTLDs, ran such a system under the name Site Finder for several weeks, until criticism from the community made them turn it off.
Systems like Site Finder work by modifying DNS servers to respond with an IP address rather than an NXDOMAIN error message whenever a request arrives for a domain name that doesn’t exist. The IP address belongs to a Web server that serves up a page explaining that the domain doesn’t exist, with helpful links to guesses as to what the user may have been looking for. Oh yes, and ads. There are some problems with this, but first an ICANN refresher.
Posted in Arstechnica | 
Tags: Corporation Names, Country Code, Dns Servers, Domain Name, Domain Redirect, Error Message, Helpful Links, Icann, Internet Corporation For Assigned Names, Internet Corporation For Assigned Names And Numbers, Internet Names, Ip Address, Memorandum, Name Finder, Names And Numbers, New Domain, Top Level Domains, Verisign, Web Server