Internet’s technical manager Icann narrows field of address suffixes

The group assuming technical management of the Internet, which will likely select new suffixes for the world’s Web addresses at a meeting later this week, has essentially narrowed its choices to about 13 possibilities, eschewing suffixes such as “kids” and “xxx.” Suffixes, called “domains,” that won preliminary approval by advisers include “web” and “biz” for e-commerce sites; “san,” “nom,” “xing,” “name” and “per” for personal Web addresses; and “coop,” “union,” “museum,” “air” and “health” for specialty Web sites such as those run by labor unions, airlines or business cooperatives. Only one proposed domain — “geo” by SRI International of Menlo Park, Calif. — won praise as both “interesting and innovative” by the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names & Numbers’ advisers. These unusual “geo” addresses, according to SRI’s technical proposal, would be reserved for information that represents geographic places, objects or processes. For example, the address “20e30n.geo” would represent 20 degrees east and 30 degrees north on a global map. SRI claims that its address plan “will become the latitude and longitude of the Internet’s virtual world.”