NTIA Frown Over NSI_s InterNIC Takeover

The U.S. Department of Commerce_s National Telecommunications and Information (NTIA) Administration Wednesday joined a growing number of organizations that are criticizing domain register Network Solutions Inc._s weekend takeover of the InterNIC site. With no advance notice, Network Solutions "redesigned" its previous site and incorporated the InterNIC site into its commercial site this week-end, confusing and angering users trying to access InterNIC. In addition, the company also changed the location of the WHOIS lookup page. "We were not consulted about this," said Becky Burr, NTIA_s acting administrator. Burr is scheduled to meet with Mike Roberts, president of the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN ) Friday, as part of its ongoing discussions in transferring government control of the domain naming system to the non-profit group. She said Network Solutions_ recent action will be on the agenda. Other Internet parties remain concerned. Network Solutions_ absorption of InternNIC comes just before ICANN was expected to tap five competing companies to become domain registrars. With this action, the selection process will be delayed, causing some to worry that Network Solutions will tighten its grip on controlling what once was a public Internet community resource.