Re: one-letter domains

[postel@ISI.EDU (Jon Postel)]

Hi.

In discussing the large size and continued rapid growth of the COM
domain, and the administrative and technical problems this engenders,
various ways of reducing the growth were suggested.

One suggestion was to just close each top level domain when it reached
some "maximum" size, say 10,000 names.

Another possibility, just one of many possibilities, is to charge money
for registering a domain name in COM, ORG, or NET.  There might be
a substantial fee for registering a name directly under one of those
top level domains.

In either of these cases, newly registering entities would be encouraged
to register with some second level domain.

Any second level domain could register other entities under themselves 
(as third level names) possibly for a fee.

There was a suggestion that "one letter" second level domains might be
prefered by those who registered as third level names.  One argument for 
this was that it is more difficult to read a lot of meaning in to a single 
letter.

The IANA took the step of reserving all the (as then un-registered) single
letter names in COM, ORG, and NET to preserve this option for the future.

--jon.