To supplement what Danny is saying, The registry-registrar model is a legacy of .com's dominance. Given the It was the easiest It would be impossible and undesirable to eliminate the registry-registrar split in the legacy gTLDs (com, net, org). And most of the new gTLDs that are likely to be sizable (info, mobi) as well as the large ccTLDs (uk, de) voluntarily accept a split between retail and wholesale levels of distribution. But he's correct that there is no need to require this in the future. All new TLDs have a tremendous obstacle to surmount -- the total dominance of the name space by incumbent registries in .com, .net and .org. If a new registry can establish themselves over that obstacle the absence of a registrar requirement can't hurt registrars much. There is no reason to require all of them as a rigid rule to abide by that separation. I wouldn't use the .int domain as an example of anything, however. It's a mess and has only about 100 eligible entities (formal international intergovernmental organizations). And the community of NGOs is not small. It accounts for tens of thousands, more likely hundreds of thousands of prospective names. >>> Danny Younger <[log in to unmask]> 9/15/2006 2:51:11 PM >>> Hi Mawaki, The current Registry-Registrar separation model is not the only model currently in use. The .int registry does in fact act as a registrar with respect to that TLD. This is an important consideration in that it serves the need of a very small community. The NGO community is also a relatively small group. If someone wanted to sponsor .ngo as a new TLD, why would you require such a sponsor to necessarily use registrars? Why couldn't the sponsor handle the limited amount of registrations in exactly the same manner as the .int registry? I do not view it as prudent from a policy perspective to shackle new TLD applicants with a particular distribution model -- they should be free to propose whatever they deem would work best, even if that means that they will act as both registry and registrar. Let them be free to test out a proof-of-concept approach. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com