"THE 6:30AM DOMAIN NAME GOLD RUSH"
by Anonymous

ICANN registrars and assorted "partners" (professional domain speculators) have woken up to the booming expiring domains industry, and are doing everything possible to get in on the act.

Consider what transpired on June 11th, 2001. The dot com registry, run by Verisign Inc., has rules that stipulate that each ICANN registrar can only open a certain number of server connections to the registry. In theory these rules should prevent any one registrar from monopolizing the resources of the shared registry system.

At least one ICANN registrar (possibly more) allowed its customers to open far more than the permitted number of server connections. Other ICANN registrars were almost entirely 'shut out' of the registry. It was the domain name equivalent of a DOS (Denial of Service) attack. But in this case, the perpetrator of the DOS attack profited by grabbing thousands of valuable names, while all the other registrars and their customers were left starting at error messages.

Don't be surprised if other registrars begin "accidentally" over-stepping their allotted connections in the hope of grabbing names, causing massive friction between registrars, and non-existent connections for end users caught in the registration cross-fire.

And here's the killer: ICANN registrars are now beginning to announce publicly what some have been doing privately for some time: handing over their most precious asset, their connection to the registry when names drop, in exchange for hard cash. Welcome to the new frontier - the domain name wild wild west.


ABOUT SITEPOINT.COM AND LEE HODGSON
Lee Hodgson is available to answer questions, provide quotes, and do interviews about the domain name business. As a writer for SitePoint.com, a website for web developers and small business owners, Lee covers the domain name beat and frequently breaks ground with previously unpublished information.



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