WebProNews spoke with Dan Jaffe, the Executive Vice President of Government Relations for ANA, about ICANN’s execution of the plan. According to him, ICANN’s plan will be harmful to both businesses and consumers.

Not only have ANA and CRIDO pleaded with ICANN, but the FTC and other areas of the U.S. government have also reached out to ICANN to express their concerns about the plan. ICANN has said that it would protect businesses against defensive buying of domains, but as Jaffe explained to us, it has not tested to see if its protections actually work.

While the impact of ICANN’s action won’t fully be felt until after it closes the application process in April, Jaffe told us that ANA and CRIDO would continue to raise its concerns in hopes of being heard.

Incidentally, ICANN has said that it has already approved 25 successful registrants for new domains.

Advertisers strongly oppose this move since they believe ICANN is trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. WebProNews spoke with Doug Wood, the General Counsel for the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), who told us that these changes could harm both brands and consumers. According to him, not only could brands become susceptible to cyber squatting and phishing attacks as a result, but the changes could also cause confusion among consumers.

“The idea of this being successful and delivering the competition or the innovation that they are speculating on is clearly questionable,” he said.

The ANA, along with the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), the Direct Marketing Association, and more, are rallying to get ICANN to overturn their changes.

Luckily, developers and scientists foresaw this problem and created a new version of Internet protocol called IPv6. This version supports a much larger address pool and includes other benefits as well.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the Number Resource Organization’s American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN), among others, have encouraged online communities to adopt IPv6 for some time. However, due to recent developments, they are aggressively urging people to make the switch.

Earlier this week, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) allocated 2 /8s of IPv4 addresses to the Asia-Pacific Regional Internet Registry (APNIC), which is one of the five central registries like ARIN. This move left only 5 /8s of IPv4 address space. Based on a global policy, this remaining space is to be distributed evenly to each of the 5 Regional Internet Registries.

According to Richard Jimmerson, the CIO of ARIN, the final distribution to the RIRs took place today, which means that the IANA free pool of IPv4 address is depleted. He told WebProNews that the free pools that RIRs now have could last anywhere from days to months, depending on the demand for each region.

“In the case of ARIN, it’s possible we could receive enough request traffic, if justified in the coming weeks, to fully deplete our resource… but by the end of this year in 2011, we do expect to be turning down requests for additional IPv4 address space,” he said.

Once this news broke, the Internet has been buzzing with so-called “IPocalypse” scenarios. While there are some very real challenges that lie ahead, ARIN and other non-profit entities are strongly urging content providers and Internet Service Providers to transition to IPv6. Because all the content on the Internet is on IPv4, companies will need to continue to support it as they make the transition.

If companies do not adopt IPv6, they could be forced to share with others, meaning that they would not have their own unique identifying numbers. As a result, applications would not be able to distinguish users and interoperability issues could occur that might reduce network performance.

“Companies will have to deploy IPv6 going forward. That is where the growth on the Internet is,” said Jimmerson.

In an effort to test IPv6, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, and several other organizations are coming together for World IPv6 Day on June 8. This test will give companies the opportunity to get comfortable with IPv6. In addition, it will help them identify any potential problems that they could prepare for.

If you would like to participate in World IPv6 Day, visit Internet Society.

There are currently 21 gTLDs such as .com, .net, .org, but ICANN will expand upon that number later on this year. According to ICANN, “choice and competition are key to the continued success and reach of the global network.” ICANN will be accepting applications for gTLDs in Q4 of this year. Possible new gTLDs include: .hotel, .law, .facebook, .ebay, etc.

The application fee for obtaining a new gTLD is $185,000. Clarke says there will be additional fees if the application moves forward. Annual fees could be greater than $75,000 or 5 percent of your generated revenue. Clarke’s suggested ballpark of bankroll needed for this venture is $1 million.

So how does all this affect search marketers? Speaking on his personal belief, Clarke says it is a possibility that search engines will include these new gTLDs into their algorithms. For example, if .law is only available to licensed attorneys, then Google might find it to be a more relevant search result instead of a random .com domain.

If you’re interested in learning more about becoming a part of the new gTLD program, be sure to look into ICANN’s gTLD application guidebook. Also, stay tuned to WebProNews Videos for a look at several case studies from Clarke Walton and Sarah Bird.