ICANN is asking all Internet stakeholders for input on gTLD batching. The major idea is to prevent too many gTLDs entering the root zone at once — meaning that there should be no more than 1,000 new gTLDs per year. The corporation also expects to perform the initial evaluation of all new gTLD applications by June or July 2013.
As the “digital archery” process was sacked, the corporation faces an uneasy task of keeping the root stable. According to ICANN’s commitment, no more than 1,000 new gTLDs per year should enter the root. Overall, the corporation has received 1930 applications for new gTLDs, with 1409 domains that have at least one application filed for them.
To prevent all new gTLDs from appearing on the Internet at once, ICANN has to use some batching method – which, at the moment, is called “smoothing”. The community input on the issue will
be accepted at newgtld-input@icann.org by August 19, 2012.
ICANN also plans to publish the results of the initial evaluation by next summer: “The current plan indicates that initial evaluation of all applications, processed in a “single batch”, can be completed in 11-12 months, possibly less – resulting in publication of results in June-July 2013″, – the company says.
After the initial evaluation, the applications that will not be rejected at this phase will still have to undergo a lengthy process of further checks. GAC, on the other hand, is planning to issue early warnings shortly after the Toronto ICANN meeting in October 2012.
