Project No.: 5003-054540 01.07.98 - 31.12.99

Project leader: Prof. Jürgen Harms, Centre Universitaire d‘Informatique (CUI), University of Geneva
e-mail: juergen.harms@cui.unige.ch

Name of project: Domaine Name eXchange

Partners:
Dr. Christian Tschudin, Institut für Informatik, University of Zurich
Werner Staub, Axone Services & Développement S.A., Geneva

Funding: Sfr 310,546.-

Summary:
The Internet has led to the creation of a new economic good: the domain name. There is already an emerging market in domain names, and it is expected to expand dramatically in the next few years. Companies known as registrars will soon be involved in registering domain names on behalf of their customers. As registrars will be competing with one another, it is important that they have a clear overview of the market and are able to negotiate the buying and selling of names among them. The allocation of domain names is currently undergoing a major shift from a first-come first-served basis to a market in which domain names are tradable. In parallel with this trend, an international organization known as CORE (Council of Registrars) is being set up with the goal of working towards the regulation and decentralization of the name registration procedure.

The goal of the project is to build a Domain Name Exchange for computerized trade in domain names, using mobile agent technology. The project develops services for the management of CORE-compliant domain names.

Cooperation:
The academic project partners (University of Geneva, University of Zurich) have extensive experience in the field of mobile agents and security, while the industrial partners (Axone Services & Développement SA, Geneva; CORE; SWITCH) are thoroughly at home with the emerging market for domain names.