Report on TLD Applications: Categories (9 November 2000)

III. ANALYSIS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

A. CATEGORIES

After the initial review of the applications, the evaluation team divided the application pool into categories in an attempt to make comparisons more meaningful. The team identified three broad categories - "general-purpose TLDs," "special-purpose TLDs" and "new services".

1. General-Purpose TLDs

The general purpose TLD category included applications proposing unrestricted TLDs and TLDs that would impose only modest restrictions on registrants. These proposals target a large group of potential registrants and end users, and tend to focus on primarily commercial applications. These applications can be roughly divided (again to ease comparison) into four groups depending on the restrictions they propose to place on registrants or the types of targeted users. These four groups, and the applications in each, are:

2. Special-Purpose TLDs

Special-purpose or specialty TLDs would impose greater restrictions on potential registrants, target a usually much narrower group of registrants, end users, or both, and tend to focus on non-commercial applications.

3. New Services

Those proposals for new TLDs that would provide a type of use or service not generally available in the DNS today were placed in a separate category. These applications fell into three broad groups that generally reflected the general similarity of use or functionality of the proposed TLDs. The three groups, and the applications that fell into each, are:

4. Assignment to Categories

As described, each application was categorized for purposes of comparative analysis. Many applicants requested more than one TLD. For purposes of this exercise, these applicants were assigned to one category and/or group based either upon the primary TLD requested by the applicant (if a primary TLD was identified by the applicant) or the substance of its application. As summarized in the following table, twenty-eight of the 44 applications were assigned to the general purpose TLD category, seven of the 44 applications were assigned to the special-purpose TLD category, and nine of the 44 applications were assigned to the new services category.