RMI.NET, Inc. this week unleashed a new
non-categorized domain name registration service at ISPCON Spring 99.
The new registration service lets companies use their trademarked
brand to a domain name, without adding .com, .net or .org
designations. RMI’s Simplified Domains system
uses a word or a phrase and places a period three characters from the
word ending to create a web site domain.
“Our Simplified Domains service eliminates
the need for superfluous letters, extensions, prefixes and numbers for
web addresses,” said Douglas H. Hanson, chairman and chief executive officer of RMI.NET.
Hanson added that this “simple concept eliminates a wealth of
inefficient or limiting characteristics of the current system, and
provides exponentially a greater number of domain name opportunities
that will be easier to locate and better protected due to our
trademark database cross-checking system.”
RMI contends that many large corporations do not own their domain
names on the Internet. Hanson cited John Deere as an example of a
corporation that does not own johndeere.com. Using the Simplified
Domains scheme for domain name registrations, John Deere could own
johnde.ere.
The RMI registry plan allows for over 45,000 possible different
combinations for top level domains. The root server also eliminates
the need for surfers to enter in the “www” prefix while searching for
web pages.
“More of our customers were facing the same dilemma in the confines of
the current top-level extensions. The domain they wanted was already
taken, so they were forced to abbreviate or create an acronym for
their domain names,” said Dave Lalande, originator of the Simplified
Domains concept. “Simplified Domains is a logical solution that will
overcome many of the limitations of the current system.”
The cost of the Simplified Domains service is $75 per year with a
minimum 2-year initial purchase. The domain names must be all lower
case, and may only contain hyphens as special characters before the
period (dot). Each domain name must be at least four characters long.
The names cannot be completely numeric, but the name may include
numbers as long as the full name is under 26 characters in length. In order to complete the purchase of the domain,
the name must be cross-referenced in the U.S. trademark database.
Hanson noted that agreements with Netscape and Microsoft were underway
to have the browsers automatically add the dot before the last three
characters of their registered domain names.
In order for the RMI domain name plan to work, more than 6,000 U.S. Internet
providers will need to add root server support for the system.
ISPs acceptance of the new domain naming system will be determined by
the demand for the new domain names.
Lalande said RMI “will be working very closely with all the industry’s
service providers to accelerate acceptance of this system.”
