Competition to the market for domain name registration.

The Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers began its open meeting in Berlin by naming eight additional companies that will be able to register domain names ending in .com, .net and .org. The Los Angeles-based nonprofit corporation aims to bring competition to the market for Internet domain name registration, which has been a lucrative business for Network Solutions. Until recently, the Herndon, Va., company had an exclusive contract with the federal government to register Internet domain names. ICANN previously selected 34 companies to compete with Network Solutions, and five of them--including AOL--are now testing a competitive registration system. The other companies, including the eight named Wednesday, will be able to join the fray after June 24. The new ones are: Abacus America_s A+Net unit, Advanced Systems Consulting, CASDNS, Domain Bank, Marvin Enterprises/Global Knowledge Group, Name-It Corp./Advanced Internet Technologies, NetNation Communications and PSI-Japan.