Security Concerns Boosted VeriSign's Dot-Net Bid

But even the choice of Telcordia as the evaluator has raised some hackles among VeriSign and ICANN critics.

Telcordia is owned by Science Applications International Corporation, a company that once owned a piece of Network Solutions. Although Telcordia fully disclosed its historic ties before the dot-net evaluation began, the company couldn't help but view VeriSign in a favorable light, said Paul Vixie, president of the Redwood City, Calif.-based Internet Systems Consortium, a company that publishes a key piece of Internet software.

"Telcordia shares a lot of corporate DNA with VeriSign. They're the same type of people, and they do things in the same general way, and these evaluations are really smell tests. ... [ICANN] picked someone who would recognize VeriSign as someone who was like themselves," Vixie said.

ICANN spokesman Kieran Baker said ICANN didn't go forward with the evaluation process until all the bidders were satisfied that Telcordia could render an unbiased evaluation.

But in the wake of the decision in VeriSign's favor, at least three of the four losing bidders have filed formal complaints about some portion of the evaluation process, and all five bidders told ICANN that they'd be submitting written comments on the evaluation process. DeNic, the company that operates Germany's sovereign dot-de, the world's second-largest Internet domain behind dot-com, has been vocal about its unhappiness with the process.

"We will comment on these issues, but I'm not sure we'll do further complaints, because we don't think it will change the results. But we're disappointed that ICANN and Telcordia did not take the opportunity to run this process more properly," DeNic director Sabine Dolderer said. DeNic complained that Telcordia misstated information about DeNic's in-house technology in the first draft of the report. Telcordia issued an amended report that did not change DeNic's ranking, which was fourth out of five.

Sentan, the joint venture between Sterling Va.-based NeuStar and Japan Registry Services, which runs Japan's sovereign dot-jp domain, placed second in the dot-net bidding process. Sentan wrote a letter to ICANN voicing concerns about the selection process, but other than that has remained fairly silent.

VeriSign's current contract to run dot-net expires June 30, and ICANN expects to complete negotiations in the next couple weeks. The ICANN board of directors must approve the final deal, and the U.S. Department of Commerce will then have the final say, but in recent years, the department has gone along with every major decision by the ICANN board. The agency declined to comment on the dot-net issue.