ICANN expects gTLD application processing to start in December

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) said it would take up to December to come up with a process for handling the large number of applications for gTLDs (generic top-level domains). There are close to 2,000 applications for gTLDs, and ICANN has said it is only possible to add 1,000 new gTLDs to the Root Zone per year, making it important that the organization evolves a process to handle the applications in batches. The Root Zone is described by ICANN as the highest level of the Domain Name System (DNS) structure and it contains the numeric IP addresses for all top level domain names such as gTLDs like .com, .net and .org, and country code top level domains like .nl .us and .uk. The organization will spend the next six weeks developing "possible solutions," and then follow it up with a series of discussions with the community and at the level of the board, ICANN said.