ICANN has put out a Request for Proposal (RFP) to conduct a technical study examining the impact of the New gTLD Program (the Program) on the DNS root system.
According to the proposed timeline the final report from ICANN will not be published until July, 2017. Certainly the application period will not occur until after that date and 6 months after would be the soonest I can see it actually opening up assuming each of the many “Milestones” are accomplished by the target date and when has ICANN ever missed a target date?
With the addition of multiple new gTLDs, there is an opportunity for data-focused insight and analysis. As this is a new type of study, ICANN is open to creative proposals from qualified firms in order to best capture the requisite data to approach and inform the question of how the New gTLD Program has affected the root server system which forms the basis for many other systems and services in the DNS/Internet.
SourceThe study must, at a minimum, explore the parameters recommended by RSSAC:
• Latency in publishing available data
• The size of the overall root zone
• The number of queries
• The response type and size distribution
• The number of sources seen
