More than 1,000 new gTLDs a year? Sure!
There’s no particular reason ICANN shouldn’t be able to add more than 1,000 new gTLDs to the DNS every year, according to security experts.
The Security and Stability Advisory Committee has informed ICANN (pdf) that the cap, which was in place for the 2012 application round, “has no relevance for the security of the root zone”.
Back then, ICANN had picked the 1,000-a-year upper limit for delegations more or less out of thin air, as a straw man for SSAC, the root server operators, and those who were opposed to new gTLDs in general to shake their sticks at. It was concluded that 1,000 should present no issues.
As it turned out, it took two and a half years for ICANN to add the first 1,000 new gTLDs, largely due to the manual elements of the application process.
SSAC is now reiterating its previous advice that monitoring the rate of change at the root is more important than how many TLDs are added, and that there needs to be a way to slam the brakes on delegations if things go titsup.
The committee is also far more concerned that some of the 2012 new gTLDs are being quite badly abused by spammers and the like, and that ICANN is not doing enough to address this problem.
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