While in Sydney I did my best to take as many photos as possible, though I also discovered the limitations of carrying a big SLR around with me ...![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=d2ce817a-67de-4db2-8bba-9fa2676dda71)
Since the ICANN meeting is about to open here in Sydney this weekend and we're one of the sponsors, I thought we'd do a small offer to tie in with the event...
There's been a lot of media attention on the new TLD process in the last few days, which is a good thing. Unfortunately most of it is badly written, misleading or simply misinformed.
Image via Wikipedia
Next month sees the 35th public ICANN meeting being held in Sydney, Australia. ![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=1e0a5499-93ce-45bf-bad9-d695271c4a20)
When ICANN announced at its June meeting last year that it was "opening up" for new TLDs it made a public commitment that it was going to have hard time following through on.![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=c870c416-f7c0-4a39-a528-d6f2b009f93b)
The 34th ICANN public meeting drew to a close the other day with a rather heated public forum. We suspect there's going to have to be at least three, and I suspect four, rounds of the application guidebook before it's ready for finalization. And if you follow all the consultation steps that we need to do to follow those rounds and the meeting schedule, as I said in a release last week, the first step -- we could not expect to have applications before December, and it may well be February (2010)And that's only the initial application.
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One of the things that people really really hated about our old order system was the lack of a bulk order option for domains.
Our nice new shiny order system solves this issue once and for all!
You can now order up to 100 domains at once via our new bulk order system.
We're also adding support for more TLDs to the website order system. We don't want to play email ping pong with you anymore than you do!
Image via Wikipedia
If DNS is not setup correctly your website(s) will not display, or if your ISP's DNS is having issues you won't be able to visit websites either.
Of course there are also nasty things that can happen if DNS is exploited.
If you want to be sure that your provider's dns is setup correctly then you can use a handy little tool provided by IANA.
You can read more about the tool and what it does on the ICANN site
One of the downsides of a free market is that people can and will change their pricing.
Verisign will be upping the registry prices on both .com and .net on October 1st 2008, while .org will push theirs up on November 9th.
We'll be keeping an eye on how this pricing affects us and will let you know if we need to adjust our pricing accordingly.
Quite a few of our clients will have received emails over the last couple of days about their domains' contact details.
The text of the email is similar to this:
Dear Domain Holder,This message is a reminder to help you keep the contact data associated with your domain registration up-to-date.
As of October 31, 2003 we are required by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to send you this reminder by the Anniversary date of each registered Domain Name that is subject to the terms and conditions of that organization.
Below is a list of domain names with your email address listed as the registrant or administrative contact. The current contact information associated with the domain may be verified by following the link provided.
If any of the contact data is inaccurate, it must be corrected. If you need assistance in accessing your account to make these updates, please reply to this email. If the contact data is accurate, no further action is required to comply with this notice.
Please remember that under the terms of your registration agreement, the provision of false Whois (contact) information can be grounds for cancellation of your domain name registration.
It also includes a reference to the domain and a link to a page showing you the current details.
If the details aren't correct you can update them via your billing control panel quite easily and if you need assistance please let us know.
Keeping your domain details up to date will save you headaches, so do take the time to verify that it is all up to date.
Image via Wikipedia
The idea behind the new policy (PDF) is to help stem online fraud and cybercrime of various kinds, however the policy document itself is very ambiguous in its wording.
While ambiguity might be a good idea in certain contexts it's not a good idea when it can affect people's businesses and income.
Both myself and several other people have gone on the record about this, but ICANN seem to have approved the policy change regardless.
Image via Wikipedia
Leo Vegoda has posted an excellent followup of the session on the ICANN blog, summarising the speakers' various comments and thoughts.
While we may have some experience with ipv6 the session in Paris definitely opened my eyes to a whole set of issues that we will need to address moving forward.
One of the things to come out of the recent ICANN meeting in Paris may have slipped "under the radar" due to the media attention for new TLDs.
Pir, the organisation that manages the dotOrg registry (.org) was granted permission to implement DNSSEC.
DNSSEC, in simple terms, adds a level of security to DNS and can help prevent spoofing. While the implementation of DNSSEC has been discussed at length by many people over the last couple of years it's only with PIR's move that we may see it becoming a reality.
You can read more about what they are doing and why over on the official PIR blog.
Last week's ICANN meeting proved to be incredibly busy, both in terms of number of attendees and the number of announcements made.
From our point of view there were a number of topics that are relevant and important to our business and I'll be posting about some of these in the coming weeks both here and on my personal domain blog.
Last Thursday morning I was on the panel for a workshop on IPv6. There were four of us on the panel talking about our experiences from very different angles. If nothing else I definitely feel that I learnt something from it.
Of course the big announcement of the week was in relation to new Gtlds. Unfortunately a lot of people seem to have cherrypicked from the announcements and now seem to think that all sorts of crazy domain extensions will now be available. They won't. (I'll follow up on this over the next few days).
As John mentioned on his blog, ICANN have finally taken steps to mitigate "domain tasting". It won't stop it outright, but it should curtail it quite a bit. It will also have the handy side-effect of stopping Network Solutions' practice of "holding" domains for "clients", as they won't be able to do it without incurring a fee.
The Afilias team were at ICANN Paris in full force and held a drinks reception to celebrate the launch of dotme (Montenegro).
Closer to home (relatively speaking), Telnic announced their launch timeline. They've also started rolling out demo applications so that both users and developers can get a "feel" for the things you can do with a dottel domain (.tel).
The next few months should be an interesting time for the domain industry!
ICANN's 32nd International public meeting opened in Paris yesterday morning.
There are several hot topics on the agenda and judging by the crowds of people at last night's welcome cocktail, attendance levels are good.
If you're interested in finding out more head over to the meeting's official site where you can find details of meetings, talks, presentations and more.
The areas that are bound to attract attention this week are quite diverse and encompass topics such as new TLDs, the launch of .tel (dottel), Whois (again!), registry failover, the registrar agreement and both IDNs and IPv6. (Can you say "acronym hell"??)
Of course no ICANN meeting would be complete without an equally busy social agenda and last night's welcome cocktail at La Defense (photo above) was no different. Wednesday's gala dinner is being held in yet another famous Parisian landmark (more on that Thursday I hope!)
Image via Wikipedia
Thursday evening sees the Firefox party in Dublin, which is sponsored by ourselves, PutPlace, Wubud and BT.
If you're in Paris this week there's a domainer meeting being held prior to the ICANN meeting. It looks like quite a few people will be attending both events, as they are in the same venue.
Saturday is BarCamp Belfast.
And of course there's ICANN in Paris which officially starts the following Monday.
Image via Wikipedia
(ICANN meeting Lisbon, 2007)
I will be heading over to the ICANN meeting in Paris next week. At present ICANN holds international meetings three times a year and it's a very good opportunity to get involved with the discussions of policy and future development of the internet.
While I am looking forward to the trip, I'm also quite nervous, as I have been asked to give a presentation on IPv6 to a group of industry peers.
Here at Blacknight, as we keep telling people, we've been investing heavily in network equipment. In simple terms we've been doing our utmost to ensure that not only do you never have to suffer the pain of an outage, but also to make sure that any sites or servers hosted by us have excellent connectivity to the outside world.
One of the areas that is of concern to a lot of people in our industry is the depletion of ipv4 space.
(I can practically hear people yawning at this point!)
Basically any device, be that a pc, phone, tablet or whatever that wants to connect to the internet needs an IP address. Back when Vint Cerf et al were coming up with the internet they had no way of knowing how big it would grow or how their addressing system would be expected to cater for so many users for such a long time. The end result - the current system of allocating IP addresses means there is a finite number of them available and that number is getting smaller every single day.
Our CTO Paul posted about our plans to bring IPv6 to everyone last year.
Of course it hasn't happened yet, but we weren't expecting it to happen overnight.
As I mentioned in a recent interview with ENN, it's a bit of a "chicken and egg" situation.
With that in mind we've been working on rolling out ipv6 to as many areas as possible.
Some of our company sites are accessible over IPv6, such as www.blacknight.ie - but not www.blacknight.com, as we're waiting to upgrade some backend software to support the necessary DNS records. I'm a strong believer in "eating my own dog food", so I've enabled IPv6 on my personal servers so that you can now access several blogs and other sites over ipv6 or ipv4.
We're also in the process of enabling IPv6 on our nameservers, so that not only would we be able to server AAAA (ipv6) records, but the nameservers themselves will be accessible over IPv6.
Unfortunately not all hosting providers and ISPs are offering native IPv6 on their networks, so we have to do some jiggery pokery to get it all working on our partner networks (we run dns in three countries for extra redundancy)
At times I feel like I'm a broken record. I keep finding myself saying the same thing to people, possibly using different words or turns of phrase, but the message is essentially the same.
If you register a domain name and pay for it you have certain rights. Of course you also have certain obligations, but most of them aren't particularly cumbersome.
What I wrote last year still hold true.
Basics:
You are entitled to access to your EPP key for your .com without paying a fee. Registrars should provide that to you in a timely fashion.
If you want to transfer the billing of a .ie domain you DO NOT need to deal with the original IEDR reseller. If you only want to move the hosting you DO NOT need to move the actual billing.
If you want to move your hosting you should be able to do so.
Unfortunately there are no clear guidelines from ICANN mandating how resellers should handle things, so you may need to refer back to the actual registrar that the reseller is using if you run into issues.
We recently had yet another issue with a particular UK company that refuses to handover clients' domains without levying a wholly unreasonable fee. If that happens to you you should try reporting them to their upstream registrar who may be in a position to take action against them.
Another "old chestnut" is the unreasonable locking of domains by some registrars after a domain has changed hands. While the argument that it is to prevent "hijacking" holds some water it's also rather "convenient" for them, as they often get another year's registration fees from clients as a result of the restriction.
ICANN recently clarified a very important policy point - inter-registrar transfers. Hopefully this will be on the agenda at the next ICANN meeting, which is scheduled for June in Paris.
The key point raised is worth repeating here:
A registrant change to Whois information is not a valid basis for denying a transfer request.
One very large US based registrar has been denying transfers for a long time based on this. I won't name them, but it doesn't take a lot of work to find out who they are.
Journalists call from time to time asking me to talk about various internet related topics. Most of the time the publications or shows are "general interest", so you can only talk about very general things.
Last night, however, was quite different, as I was one of the guests on "Domain Masters" which is broadcast and streamed weekly at 7pm EST (11pm in Ireland, midnight CET)
The show's host last night was my good friend Jothan Frakes who is one of the domain name industry's gurus.
Although I was very nervous (which probably showed!) we had a nice chat about Blacknight, domains and the internet industry.
If anyone wants to hear the show there should be an mp3 version available on the WebmasterRadio site at some time over the next couple of days.
UPDATE: The Mp3 from last night is now available on the site http://www.webmasterradio.fm/Internet-Marketing/Domain-Masters/Geo-Domain-Expo-and-BlackKnight.htm
UPDATE 2: Of course if I provided proper hyperlinks people might be actually able to use them!
So here you go: Show details including podcast
The following article was published earlier today in Washington Internet Daily. It is reproduced here with the publisher's permission. I posted a related article on my domain blog earlier this week.
Registrar Network Solutions could face legal action over its practice of locking in domain names that are searched but not bought, Michigan attorney Enrico Schaefer said Thursday. The action violates consumer protection laws banning deceptive business practices, he said. There's no indication on Network Solutions's website that use of its free availability search prevents other registrars from offering the name, he said. "We are considering a class action," Schaefer told us. Network Solutions defended the process as a shield for customers against other front-runners.
The practice, "domain name front-running"(DNFR) may differ from the term in its best known sense. In November, .uk registry Nominet published a paper on its experience with DNFR, calling it a "technique believed to exist, but so far unproved, whereby one person monitors the activity of a second person who is planning to register a domain name and the first person then registers the domain name before the second person." Nominet concluded that DNFR "in the most common sense of someone tracking your actions to register a domain just before you can, does not exist."
DNFR is under investigation by ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory Committee, which in October issued an advisory on the practice and is assessing the resulting comments, an ICANN spokesman said. The panel defined DNFR as "the opportunity for a party with some form of insider information to track an Internet user's preference for registering a domain name and preemptively register that name." It preliminarily found insufficient evidence that any party involved in the registration process engages in DNFR. Nor did it set standards for judging whether monitoring name availability is acceptable or not.
Network Solutions' ploy is "more nefarious," said Michele Neylon, managing director of Irish hosting and domain registration company Blacknight Internet Solutions. He agrees with Nominet that DNFR, in classic form, doesn't take place. But Network Solutions automatically registers names that prospective buyers query on its site and warehouses them preventing them from being offered by any other registrar and ensuring that consumers are stuck paying Network Solutions's often higher prices, Neylon said.
Network Solutions Vice President of Policy Jonathon Nevett responded Tuesday to the allegations, calling the practice a security measure meant to allay customer concerns about DNFR. The measure kicks in when someone searches for an available domain but decides not to buy it immediately after the search, he said. The registrar puts the name on reserve, during which time it's not active and Network Solutions doesn't monetize traffic to it, he said. If the name isn't bought in four days it's released to the registry and made generally available for registration, Nevett said.
The effort also tries to "take an arrow out of the quiver of the [domain] tasters," Nevett said. They’re the largest front-runners, buying search data from ISPs or registries, then tasting names for profitability, he said. "Some folks might not agree with our approach, but we are trying to prevent this malicious activity from impacting our customers," Nevett said.
"This is definitely front-running," said Ross Rader, director of research and innovation at registrar Tucows. Network Solutions has "put some lipstick on it and put another name on it by claiming that this is a consumer protection measure," he said. Either way, it's using availability and Whois search data for purposes other than the actual buying process, he said.
Existing DNFR data are believed to stem from ISPs selling log files of DNS data to buyers who parse the materials for Whois queries. They then use the information, and the five-day grace period registrars have to cancel a registration for a full refund from the registry, to front-run in various ways, said Tucows President Elliot Noss. Network Solutions is using others' bad behavior to excuse its own, he said, when the focus should be on ISPs’ selling
DNS data for inappropriate purposes, he said.
Network Solutions alleges that registries are selling availability or Whois data to third parties, Rader said. In a recent blog on the Tucows site, company Marketing Vice President Ken Schafer quoted a Network Solutions spokeswoman as saying that the registrar believes some registries or ISPs or both may be selling search data to front-runners. If Network Solutions has specific knowledge that registries are doing that, "they should do the right
thing" and come forward with it, Rader said.
However the practice is labelled, it raises strong consumer protection issues, Schaefer said. The registrar is essentially "tricking" consumers into using its free search tools without telling them they won't be able to buy the name queried from anyone but Network Solutions, he said. No one has contested front-running in court. The practice is new and loss of a single domain typically doesn't generate enough damages to justify legal action, he said. But suits against registrars engaged in front-running are "viable and likely inevitable," he said.
Network Solutions informed ICANN when it launched the process, an ICANN spokesman said. ICANN is looking into the matter to see whether it complies with the registrar accreditation agreement, he said. -- Dugie Standeford
Reproduced by permission of Warren Communications News, Inc., 800-771-9202, www.warren-news.com
I just got back from the ICANN meeting in Los Angeles, California.
As happens with those kind of events you spend about a week soaking up information. There are a lot of people in the internet industry globally and some of them are doing very interesting and exciting things. I'll be posting about some of those in the coming weeks.
Of course, like any industry, the internet is not without its problems. One of the areas that I've touched on previously is registrant rights and you can expect to hear more about it in the future as ICANN tries to put in place mechanisms to help better protect end users.
All in all it was a fascinating and fruitful week and I am looking forward to the next one!
I'm currently attending the 30th International ICANN meeting in Los Angeles, California.
This morning we have been sitting through the final meeting of the outgoing board and the handover to the new one
Peter Dengate Thrush has been chosen to fill the position vacated by Vint Cerf.
Today also marks the addition of Dr Dennis Jennings to the board.
One of the main theme's at the ICANN meeting in Los Angeles, California, is IDN - internationalised domain names.
IDN has been a topic of much interest, discussion and debate for the last few years as currently you cannot use non-ascii characters in domain names. While that may not be an issue for an English speaker it is a problem for speakers of other languages who use other character sets.
To get an idea of what is possible have a look at the examples on the ICANN LA site.
I'm heading off to Los Angeles in the morning to attend the ICANN meeting.
I'll try to blog a bit from there either on here or on my personal blog or my domain news blog (you're spoilt for choice!).
The meeting agenda is available online.
If you're not a big fan of TLAs (three letter acronyms) then it's probably a nightmare trying to decipher the timetable.
As you can see there are meetings running from Saturday until Friday on the main timetable.
At events like this there will also be a lot of informal meetings going on all day and all night.
Some of the topics that will be on the agenda this time round include:
One of the areas that ICANN has been working hard on improving is that of public participation, so you can pose questions to panels even if you are on the other side of the globe. More information can usually be found on the public participation site or the ICANN blog.
The next ICANN meeting is being held in Los Angeles, California.
Although the meeting doesn't officially start until the Monday there will be meetings and events over the weekend as well.
I'll be attending again, as there are quite a few topics of interest on the table.
If you're interested in the meeting schedule, then it's available on the site.
The meeting will also include a special event in honour of Vint Cerf who has served ICANN since the beginning.
As a domain registrant you have certain rights. Unfortunately those rights can be abused by companies that don't believe in ethical business practices.
It would be nice and simple if the whois display were the same across all TLDs (ie. domain extensions), but they're not.
A basic right is for the domain to be registered to you and under your control.
That means that the domain details should show yours. For example a .ie domain registered to me shows:
status: Active
nserver: NS.BLACKNIGHTSOLUTIONS.COM
nserver: NS2.BLACKNIGHTSOLUTIONS.COM
source: IEDR
person: Michele Neylon
nic-hdl: ABG182-IEDR
source: IEDR
person: Blacknight.ie Hostmaster
nic-hdl: AAM456-IEDR
source: IEDR
(I'm only showing the contact parts)
The administrative contact for the domain is clearly listed as me, while the second contact (tech-c) shows Blacknight, as I obviously register my domains with my own company.
For some TLDs, such as .eu the command line whois will give out varying amounts of information and you may need to go to the web based whois server to get the full details.
In either case the registrant is listed somewhere, even if the public cannot see it easily.
If the registrant wants to move their domain between registrars that is their right.
Under ICANN rules registrars are obliged to provide the EPP codes to registrants in a timely fashion (bearing in mind that you cannot transfer newly registered .com's etc., between registrars immediately)
If they want to update their domain's nameservers then they should be able to do so.
Unfortunately this does not happen.
The reality is that a disproportionate number of companies are denying registrants basic rights.
In some cases they may be doing this by accident, but in other cases it is 100% deliberate.
There is no valid reason for your web designer or developer to put their details all over your domain. None.
If you have asked your designer / developer to register a domain for you and paid them for it then it should be registered to you (which is one of the reasons why .ie domains are attractive!).
Over the past couple of years I've seen some crazy things, including a particular "registrar" that registers ALL .co.uk domains to themselves regardless of who has requested the domain.
Another company warehoused hundreds of .eu domains "on behalf" of their clients ie. in the hope that the clients would want to register the domains at some point in the future. Of course it wasn't clear if they would be charged a premium for this "service".
If a provider won't update the DNS for a domain then there is something wrong somewhere.
(If they can't update it due to the DNS not being loaded that is the registrant or their provider's issue!)
There's no good reason to delay handing over an EPP key.
If a registrant wants their co.uk domain retagged simply do it.
Why make people suffer?
In case you haven't heard the cost of .com/.net/.info/.biz domains will be going up later this year.
I got an email from the registrar we currently use about the price increases last night, so I thought I'd share the news.
The price increase isn't welcome, but it comes from the domain registries NOT from ICANN or the registrars. Unfortunately the registrars have to pass on some of their costs to companies like ourselves (although we are an accredited registrar for several TLDs we still aren't accredited by ICANN).
We've always priced com/net/org/info/biz in a "sane" way. We've never been the cheapest in the world, but we've always been able to maintain our prices. This isn't going to change, though it does mean that our margins will be slightly tighter than before.
If you're used to registering domains directly with us, then you have nothing to worry about, as we don't intend to increase our prices in the foreseeable future.
If you're using other companies to register .com etc., then you may need to keep a watchful eye on their pricing. Some of the registrars have been pricing themselves so low that an increase will be inevitable. If you're using one of those registrars I'd recommend you look at renewing domains for multiple years now before the price increases kick in on October 14/15.
