In computer news this week, 10/09/2002

The internet today part 3 - is it ICANN or I can't ....

Last week I talked about how noone owns the internet, and how the current governing body - ICANN - Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers - icann.org - has been the target of much criticism. In doing this series on the internet, I had emailed ICANN a few very simple questions:

Question 1. As you are the governing authority of the internet, and control all the legal domain names and the registration of them, can you tell me what is the total number of registered websites in the world today, and can you share some of the statistics of internet growth.

Answer: Apologies, but ICANN does not have the statistics that

you request. You may wish to try <www.domainstats.com>,

however.

(The site they referred me to did not have all the information I was asking about, but it did say that there are 30,982505 domains registered worldwide, and that 21,440,676 are dotcoms. These numbers are vastly different from other numbers I have found in my research - one figure which said there were 162 million internet hosts) so the obvious question is "Who knows?"

It seems odd to me that the governing body of the internet - in charge of it and with the absolute legal authority - can't answer this simplest of questions. I know I could call up General Motors and ask them how many cars they sold in a year, and I'm sure they would know, and I'm sure they would be able to show statistics on sales growth.

But here the organization in charge of the internet says they don't have that kind of information ....

My next question to ICANN related to internet scams. I had originally purchased my own domain name from Network Solutions, the company that was originally in charge of the internet, and I know that I need to renew my domain name in a few months. I know how to do this online and I have it in my outlook calendar to remind me. But last week I received a letter - yes a snail mail letter - from a company that has an American flag in its logo and looks very official - telling me that my website is up for renewal and that I can renew it through them. This immediately made me suspicious. The letter referred to the "deregulation of domain names which allows consumers their choice of registrar".

This letter reminded me of those phony yellow pages ad letters many businesses get. I know that in the reorganization of the internet, including the creation of ICANN - that there are now over 100 authorized registrar companies. You can go to icann.org and on their main page there is a selection to view the list of accredited registrars, and this also shows you the list of current legitimate domain names - .aero .biz .com .info .name .net .org.

But this company is not listed there, so I also asked ICANN this question:

"I recently received a renewal letter from a company stating they can

renew my own website at a lower rate than Network Solutions. Yet I do not see this company listed in your listings of legitimate registrars.

ICANN replied: We also do not have information on the legitimacy of

This company. We only know that they are not ICANN accredited.

Say what? Another non-answer, from the supposed authority.

And this questions leads to our next week show - how do you know who people really are on the internet?

For Raw Bytes, This is Frank Delaney

POB 222 Spangle, Wa 99031 (509)245-3736 624-7230