16 Describe the applicant's efforts to ensure that there are no known operational or rendering problems concerning the applied-for gTLD string

Prototypical answer:

Question 16
Dot-Sale LLC

We do not anticipate any significant rendering or related operational issues with .Sale. The string ʺsaleʺ is an US ASCII only string and hence does not pose any issues with respect to root level IDNs. Although there is a small set of homographs for “sale” in some upper case Cyrillic scripts, these ʺwordsʺ have no meaning. This leaves two sets of issues that have to be addressed; namely, issues that pertain to all applications that support IDNs at the second level or intend to at a later date, and issues that are specific to this application for .Sale. Significant work has been put into IDNs since they were first proposed in 1996, however, in some areas there is still a lack of standardization and normalization. In these areas, we have followed as closely as possible the de-facto and de-jure standards as they exist today. However, we remain open to any new requirements or standards that would enhance these services to our registrants and the Internet as a whole.

Dot-Sale LLC does not intend to make IDNs available for registration at launch. The Company may introduce IDNs at a later date if appropriate, although IDNs are not deemed to be significant to the intended market for .Sale at this time. If IDNs were to be launched, a process would be followed consisting of at least these steps; a) select an already established table, or develop such a table, b) give at least a 180 day notice to ICANN, IANA, Registrars, registrants and the public of our intentions, c) allow current registrants the ability to move or convert their current registrations to an equivalent code point variant and d) have a Sunrise and Landrush for IDN registrations before then become generally available.

Dot Sale LLC along with its partners, SRS provider, Registrars, and resellers, will track any requirements and recommendations that are developed as we proceed toward delegation, launch, and beyond.

Afilias also anticipates the introduction of this TLD without operational or rendering problems. Based on a decade of experience launching and operating new TLDs, Afilias, the back-end provider of registry services for .Sale, is confident the launch and operation of .Sale presents no known challenges. The rationale for this opinion includes:
- The string is not complex, is represented in standard ASCII characters and follows relevant technical, operational and policy standards;
- The string length is within lengths currently supported in the root and by ubiquitous Internet programs such as web browsers and mail applications;
- There are no new standards required for the introduction of .Sale;
- No onerous requirements are being made on registrars, registrants or Internet users, and;
- The existing secure, stable and reliable Afilias SRS, DNS, WHOIS and supporting systems and staff are amply provisioned and prepared to meet the needs of .Sale.

Similar gTLD applications: (1)