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Geeks push for second-level domain

James Pearce ZDNet Australia

Published: 10 Dec 2002 09:23 GMT

Professional Internet engineers and technicians in New Zealand are fighting to get their own second-level domain, geek.nz.

The proposal is being taken seriously by the New Zealand Office of the Domain Name Commissioner, who has called for a two-month period of public discussion on the issue.

"Geek.nz defines a distinct community of interest, just as other second-level domains do," said one of the proponents, Andy Linton. "However, geek.nz also provides an opportunity for deploying additional, more experimental services such as DNS Security (DNSSEC) and IPv6 (the new version of Internet Protocol), which are many years away from deployment in other registries, like CO.NZ."

According to Linton, experimentation with DNS security in another second-level domain, such as co.nz, would risk the quality of service experienced by the users of that domain, which would be unacceptable. However, the community that would be served by geek.nz is technical, and driven by the development of technology.

"Experimentation is a way of life for the geek community," he said.

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