.Net Hurdles: Standards, Security

Everyone knows .com is better to .net but how much so remains a disagreeing point. I believe as an absolute minimum baseline, .com holds at least a seventy five / twenty-five edge over .net. After that, we will work our way down. In reality some domainers think .net is worth ten percent of a .com as a general rule. This is an extraordinary for the negative so you are most probably safe in thinking that for pure domain purposes, a .net holds between ten to 25 percent of a .com's value. In practical function, .net performs better than stereotypes would prefer people to believe. Fairly simply, many of us can recollect a .net and .net web sites have shown that they can be branded into a marketable property without or with the .com's help. Manifestly it'd be useful to hold both extensions under your domain keywords, but a couple of big online web sites have done well soley under .net.

In addition, if you're purchasing for pure S.E.O purposes, .net works superbly and permits your site to work under the same broad scale as a .com ( while other extensions like .org and .mobi do not. ) .Com domains will be king but if the keywords are fascinating enough and the price ticket on the .com is out of your position, there is not any shame in taking a .net, particularly thanks to the quick registering of web site names. If you're considering whether a .com is worthwhile, there are many key things to consider. First, are you registering just the keyword? If this is so then a .net is perhaps ok, but if you are adding a prefix like my or the to a double keyword base, you are stretching it. Next, is the .com developed? If the .com is developed, you might like to look at another domain but if it is parked, this is point in favour of .net as you may get some unhappy drip down type-in. 3rd , how competitive is the niche? If you are dropping down from a .com in a gently competitive niche, it becomes less sure you would like to build a significant site on the .net.

Last, how does the domain sound? This test is usually a good tie breaker in your call.

As Microsoft prepares to fill in developers on its next-generation Internet strategy this week, the company faces the considerable challenge of turning some of its biggest weaknesses into strengths, customers and analysts say.

Microsoft.Net, the vendor's plan for simplifying data access and offering Internet-based software subscriptions, will require Microsoft to support industry standards and ultimately link its products to competing platforms. It also requires greater stability and security than Microsoft delivers today, customers and analysts say.

Microsoft will elaborate on the strategy this week at its Professional Developers Conference in Orlando, Fla., having first outlined the plan late last month. Microsoft executives said .Net will be a more sweeping technological shift than its last major change in product strategy, when it "embraced" the Internet in 1995. Microsoft compares the .Net shift to the switch from DOS to the GUI-based Windows 10 years ago.

Yet as ambitious as the initiative sounds, some questioned whether Microsoft will be able to deliver, given problems with existing products--notably interoperability, security and reliability shortcomings. Also, concerns about the company's future following the recent U.S. District Court decision to break up Microsoft put .Net's prospects into question, said Giga Information Group analyst Rob Enderle. "Put together, those problems will likely prove insurmountable," Enderle said.

At its Professional Developers Conference, Microsoft will look to prove otherwise. The company will provide its cadre of programmers with important technical details about the strategy. In addition, Microsoft will release beta versions of the first tools based on the blueprint, called Visual Studio.Net, the new name for its Visual Studio tool.

The new tool will include a beta version of a new programming language, C# (pronounced C-Sharp), that will compete with Java. Like Java, C# is based on C++, and will therefore be attractive to developers with C++ skills. But where Java emphasizes cross-platform portability, C# is designed to use XML and SOAP to provide cross-platform connectivity.

Yet many question whether Microsoft will be able to link its software to other platforms and overcome a legacy of security and reliability problems. "It's awfully ambitious. It's a very lofty goal," said David Pensak, an IT manager at chemical company E. I. DuPont de Nemours Inc.

Dan Kusnetzky, an analyst with International Data Corp., said .Net will require customers to rely on Windows 2000, which could be a problem. Microsoft said late last month that it expected to sell about 3 million copies of Windows 2000 by June 30. "That's pretty fast sales, but it's a small fraction of the 130 million PC operating systems that Microsoft expects to sell this year."

"People seem to be taking to this brand-new operating system in a careful and measured fashion," Kusnetzky said. There are other obstacles. Microsoft has an imperfect record when it comes to standards support, said Giga's Enderle. The company's XML support is strong, for example, but Microsoft's support for the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) has been weak, he said. Reliability has proved to be a big problem for Microsoft and will be critical if the company is to sell its .Net strategy. Currently, Microsoft Outlook and Internet Explorer are a source of crashes, viruses and security holes, Enderle said.

Bruce Schneier, CTO of consulting firm Counterpane Internet Security Inc., said the SOAP protocol on which .Net will be based is inherently insecure. It's designed to use the e-mail protocol SMTP for transport to let DCOM objects communicate with each other and get around firewalls. "This is a protocol for a hacker to tunnel through your firewall and mess with the file systems," Schneier said.

But some say the obstacles Microsoft faces are nothing new and won't impede its strategic shift.

"A lot of .Net is business-as-usual for Microsoft," said Gartner Group analyst David Smith. "They're using the application APIs to sell the platform. It's the same old API-leveraging story. It's just that the API is now at the level of Internet service interfaces."

Some customers are bullish on Microsoft's plans. The shift to delivering software by subscription could make managing 5,000 PCs an easier job at Banco Popular, said Roland Stolberg, assistant vice president of system programming. "We just can't keep buying the PCs and loading the software on them," he said.