Public Comment is a vital part of our multistakeholder model. It provides a mechanism for stakeholders to have their opinions and recommendations formally and publicly documented. It is an opportunity for the ICANN community to effect change and improve policies and operations.
Amazon supports SSAC’s recommendation that the ICANN Board identify and reserve a top-level domain (“TLD”) for private use, and refrain from delegating it in the future. We also agree with IANA’s determination that “.INTERNAL” meets to criteria outlined by SSAC and should be selected for this purpose.
Amazon makes extensive use of the “.INTERNAL” TLD within our network for infrastructure that is only accessible locally. Unsurprisingly, other businesses have likely made the same decision. This would be a challenging decision to change after the fact. Furthermore, potential use cases for “.INTERNAL” can be implemented on a variety of different strings that are yet to be delegated. For these reasons, we recommend that ICANN declare the “.INTERNAL” TLD to be reserved to mitigate the significant risk of name collisions that could result from it being globally accessible.