SAC123 was published on 20 Dec 2023. All SSAC publications can be found at https://www.icann.org/en/ssac/publications.
| Recommendation | Description | Current Phase |
|---|---|---|
| Recommendation 1 | New technologies are changing how name resolution happens on the Internet. The DNS remains the prominent, or default, naming system for the Internet, but alternative naming systems are in use as well. This is nothing particularly new, as there have always been naming systems besides the DNS in use throughout the Internet’s history. These alternative naming systems use the same syntax as the DNS, dot-separated labels. There are many motivations for copying this syntax, but the primary reason is because designers of these alternative naming systems wish to benefit from the existence of software applications built to receive DNS names as input. This has the potential to create situations where the same name exists in DNS and in an alternative system, potentially causing name collisions. However, there is only one domain namespace and its referential integrity is important for Internet users and for the stability and security of Internet names. Thus, as alternative naming systems increase in popularity their use threatens to increase ambiguity in the shared single domain namespace. This increased ambiguity in Internet naming threatens to undermine the trust that users have in Internet identifiers and the services that rely on them. | Phase 2 | Understand |
