The US government has extended its domain-name registration contract with Network Solutions for one more week in order to iron out the details of a landmark decision that will shape the future direction of the Internet.
The lucrative, five-year arrangement between Network Solutions (NSOL) and the Commerce Department to manage the "root" servers underlying the .net, .org., and .com top-level domains was to have expired Wednesday.
But the contract was extended until 7 October while the process for determining how other registrars will be allowed to register names in the .com registry is resolved, according to a Network Solutions statement.
A Network Solutions spokesman declined to elaborate on the specific technical hurdles remaining.
"We are trying to work though a lot of technical details and compounding this are the policy and political considerations that have entered into the creation of the nonprofit entity," said Chris Clough.
"There are many issues relating to registration services and the introduction of competition, and we are tying to figure out how to do that."
The grace period also gives the company additional time to work out exactly how the root databases will be opened up to competitors, and the resulting implications for intellectual property.
"We were the first to be in this space, so we have a vested interest in what happens to the registry," said Cheryl Regan, senior communications manager for Network Solutions. "But we are eager to move on and develop our core domain-name registration business."
In the meantime, the White House will review the latest proposal for a new international nonprofit organization called Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.
ICANN is slated to take over technical responsibility for the Internet, replacing the services of both the Internet Assigned Names Authority and Network Solutions.
