to:// Towards an Open Names pace for Web Resources

In this paper we present an open namespace for web resources under the URI scheme to://. It is a web indirection service that converts URLs-to-URLs (i.e. to:// -> http://) and introduces the novel concept of Web Top Level Domains (wTLDs). Every wTLD like to://hypertext refers to an URL like http://www.ht2009.org and it is possible to resolve subdomains under these wTLDs (to://2008.hypertext, to://proceedings.2008.hypertext). The overall architecture is based on browser plugins and web server software using standard protocols like HTTP and XML to resolve domains under the to:// URI scheme. Furthermore, the infrastructure also provides an open search engine over domain names using meta-information like tags or geo-location. We present a running prototype of this system called Socialdns.net [1] hosting more than 2.000 domains.