Things are awfully quiet in the .edu domain, and a recent bid by a nonprofit university coalition to take responsibility for that domain will likely keep things that way - to the dismay of at least one Net critic.
Last December, Educom, a nonprofit consortium of higher education institutions that facilitates the introduction, use, and access of information technology, submitted a proposal to take over the management of .edu when its current caretaker, Network Solutions, hands over the reigns later this year.
"We wrote to the NSF and proposed that we ... create a panel of university presidents and chief information officers [CIOs] to review requests for .edu assignments and do it as a service to the university community," said Educom's Dr. Robert Heterick.
The .edu domain is presently only available to four-year universities, and since most of those institutions already have their domain names assigned, administration demands are not heavy. Heterick estimated that there are only "a couple dozen" new .edu registrants each year. Further, .edu domain names are free of charge, unlike the US$100 registration and $50 maintenance fees that apply to .com, .org, and .net.
"K-12 schools and community colleges are typically registered under country domains," states a document on the InterNIC Web site. Most delegated regional branches of the .us domain, such as .ca.us, are free, but others are not.
Dave Farber, moderator of the Interesting People mailing list, said that the prestigious .edu domain should be opened up to high schools and community colleges and the selection process should be more democratic.
"It is notable that Educom equates the academic community with college presidents and CIOs, [and] not with the faculty and students and even those institutions which educate outside the college level - like high schools and such," said Farber in his email newsletter.
But Educom's Heterick said it was too early to say if the current universities-only rule will continue if his organization takes over the domain from Network Solutions.
"If [Network Solutions] were interested in having us do this, we would express back to them a rational way of deciding who is eligible for the .edu and who is not," said Heterick. "Whether it would be the current policy ... I don't think it would be up to Educom to make that decision," he said.
Another source that maintains a Web site index of California's 106 community colleges saw no reason not to open up the .edu domain.
"It would seem like unless there is some breathtaking statistical information out there saying that [opening .edu up to colleges] is going to bog everything down, then why not?" said James Roper, network administrator with the California Community Colleges Foundation. "I've never been one to like the regional domain areas," said Roper.
So far, Educom is the only organization to formally express interest in the .edu domain. Ira Magaziner, Clinton's Net guru, recommended in his recent "green paper" that the .edu domain be assigned to a nonprofit organization.
However, Farber charged, in proposing an advisory board composed of university executives, the Educom plan suggests that the current exclusionary rules will likely continue.
"Ever notice that while the university is only viable if it has faculty and students, organizations like Educom seem to think they are superfluous and need not be noticed?" Farber said.
