THE Australian spearheading an expansion of the world wide web says the introduction of new generic domain names will be like the opening up of land during Australia's gold rush.

Paul Twomey, president and chief executive of ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), is predicting an explosion of new top level domains (TLDs), such as .car and .shop once the first applications are made early next year.

Speaking from Paris where more than 1700 delegates from 150 countries have packed a four-day internet conference to discuss the next generation of developments, Dr Twomey said the expansion would revolutionise the way people, companies or organisations expressed themselves on the web. 

"This is our largest-ever meeting. A lot of people are very interested in the way the internet is developing," Dr Twomey told AAP.

This is very significant, it's going to be like opening up land in the wild west of 1800s Australia or America, though it's more west than wild.

"We are discussing a virtual geographical expansion of the internet ... a bit like Ballarat in the gold rush era, with many people staking their claim.

"This is all new virtual real estate."

Delegates and stakeholders are discussing policy development at the Paris forum and the first applications for new TLDs could be lodged as early as next April.

Dr Twomey said hundreds, if not thousands, of generic domain names could be created, including brands like .ebay or .pepsi, as well as broader product groups like .ship, .shop, .car or .florist.

Languages other than English will also figure into the new generation of domain names, with TLDs in Cyrillic or containing Roman alphabet characters, Dr Twomey said.

"All the languages of the world can become domain names. We've been doing some testing using Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia," he added.

Concerns about security, or abuse of the system by people like cyber-squatters, would also be mitigated by factors including the cost of creating and registering new domains, and the technical know-how to run and maintain registries, with the application fees expected to start from $US100,000 ($104,000), he added.

"We've taken advice from security experts who say there's no technical reason for not having lots of generic domains.

"Our principle is we don't decide what TLDs people apply for. People are free to apply for any domain name, but they will have to be able to show they have a business background and the technical ability to run a registry.

"As for cybersquatters, the fees will no doubt be prohibitive, in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, so unless they remortgage their home, it will be more difficult for such individuals to try to claim certain TLDs.

"The second thing is, quite specifically, if a person or organisation feels their rights have been infringed, we will have an international arbitration system to look into such cases."

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