Move Puts NSI On Defensive

By SAROJA GIRISHANKAR

Network Solutions Inc.'s decision to restrict access to two of its important databases has offended several Internet constituencies.

Critics contend that NSI's actions fly in the face of ongoing efforts to open competition to domain name registration. Indeed, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the nonprofit group charged with opening the domain-name registration business, is meeting this week in Singapore to firm up guidelines that would ultimately crack NSI's monopoly.

The move that sparked the most criticism was NSI's decision to provide access on a case-by-case and need-to-know basis to the top-level domain names (.com, .net and .org) stored in the root zone file database, which maps domain names to IP addresses.

Historically, free access to the database has eased the chores of network administrators at Internet service providers, allowing them to map domain names to IP addresses to provide quick access to Web sites.

"We believe that core information about assigned domain names and their IP addresses is public information and should be publicly available," said Michael Roberts, ICANN's interim CEO.

NSI earlier in January also had restricted access to its WHOIS database that contains details on users and their IP addresses.

NSI said it had good cause to restrict access to the databases. "We had to stop speculators and direct marketers who used the domain and IP information to spam unwanted e-mail to Internet users," a spokesman said.

Although NSI's restrictions are permanent, free access to ISPs and other legitimate parties has been kept open. So far, 104 ISPs have been authorized to access the root zone file, NSI said.

The conflict is over who owns the root zone file, which originally belonged to the federal government. NSI claims that it owns the file and can control access.

Aspiring registrars said they are troubled by the restrictions.

"We sympathize with NSI for the problems it has had with the speculators and spammers, but unfortunately the message NSI is sending is that it's closing down access when it should be opening it up," said Sascha Mornell, director of marketing at Register.com.