ICANN has announced the approval of the Name Collision Occurrence Management Framework by the ICANN Board New gTLD Program Committee (NGPC) to mitigate the impact of name collisions in the domain name system (DNS), which typically occur when fully qualified domain names conflict with similar domain names used in private networks. When this occurs, users can be taken to an unintended Web page or encounter an error message.

The body says affected registry operators ought to turn to “controlled interruption” to alert system administrators that there may be an issue in their network. Specifically, an IPv4 address – 127.0.53.53 – will appear in system logs, enabling a quick diagnosis and remediation.

“We now have a well-defined methodology for mitigating name collisions for delegated top-level domain names and a path forward for registries to unblock certain second-level domains in their list,” said Akram Atallah, president of ICANN’s Global Domains Division.  “These operational processes, which were developed in conjunction with the multistakeholder community, will help to ensure the security of the domain name system.”

ICANN will also provide information to and work with the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) to consider whether policy work on developing a long-term plan to manage gTLD name collisions issues should be undertaken. ICANN will also be holding webinars to discuss details of the Name Collision Occurrence Management Framework.

Registrars are now required to act on name collision reports from ICANN within two hours of receipt of the report during the first two years of the life of the top-level domain (TLD), measure the time of delegation of the TLD and implementing continuous controlled interruption for a 90-day period.The framework implementation requirements were developed with input from many sources including the ICANN community, a report published by JAS Global Advisors LLC, and advice from the Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC).

The Name Collision Occurrence Management Framework also calls for the delegation of .CORP, .HOME, and .MAIL to be deferred indefinitely. ICANN will collaborate with the technical and security communities to determine the best way to handle these strings in the long term.

ICANN monitors the registry’s implementation of the controlled interruption to ensure compliance with contractual requirements, it cordinates an emergency response for name collision reports only where there is a reasonable belief that the name collision presents a clear and present danger to human life; and works within the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and with other relevant technical communities to identify a mechanism for IPv6 IP addresses that provides similar functionality to that being used in IPv4 (the loopback IP address 127.0.53.53).

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