As part of ICANN’s Registry Failover project, I have been informally asking questions outside ICANN on what types of information the community, users and the public would want to receive in the event of a registry failure. So far the response has been:
- When will the TLD be operational again?
- What caused the event?
- How can that event be prevented in the future?
- What are my options?
- Who is the point of contact at ICANN for questions and what is their availability?
- Is there a resource available to post updates on the event or failure?
I am open to other suggestions. As background, an update on the project was provided to the ICANN Board on 13 March 2007 (http://www.icann.org/minutes/minutes-13mar07.htm) and an initial report on ICANN’s gTLD registry data escrow requirements was posted on 5 March 2007 (http://www.icann.org/announcements/announcement-05mar07.htm). This post is not related to registrars, so please keep the focus of any suggestions on existing TLDs or ideas for new gTLDs, including IDN registries.
{ 19 comments }
Danny Younger 04.19.07 at 9:17 am
Preliminary work on this topic was done by former ICANN Board Director Mike Palage; his article, “Minimizing the Impact of Internet Stakeholders in connection with a gTLD Registry
Financial/Business Failure” is a good read — see the attachment at the bottom of this URL http://forum.icann.org/lists/new-gtld-questions/msg00006.html It would be nice to know if Mike’s proposed bonding requirement proposal has as yet been evaluated by the Board or by ICANN Staff.
Patrick Jones 04.19.07 at 9:23 am
Thanks Danny. I have a copy of Mike’s article, and it is part of my working materials for the project.
Can you forward this blog post to the NCUC and ask if there is anything they would like to add?
Danny Younger 04.19.07 at 12:16 pm
Patrick,
Your request has been posted to the NCUC Discussion List. A follow-up question: The minutes of the 13 March Board meeting indicated that the registry failover topic would be a subject of discussion at a Board workshop at the ICANN Lisbon meeting. You had posed a number of questions to the Board at the 13 March meeting:
– What is ICANN’s duty to registrants in the event of a gTLD registry failure?
– What triggers ICANN involvement in potential registry failure?
– Are there scenarios in which a registry would be allowed to fail without such a failover mechanism?
– Should ICANN take over the short-term operation of a registry or should a registry be required to designate a back-up registry operator that would step in to maintain the registry in the event of a long-term failure?
Can you now comment on the Board-level guidance that you received subsequent to that Board workshop so that we may get a sense of what answers were provided by the Board?
Patrick Jones 04.19.07 at 12:25 pm
Danny,
This was discussed generally during the meeting of the Board in Lisbon, a link to the transcript is available here:
http://www.icann.org/meetings/lisbon/transcript-board-30mar07.htm
This also came up in discussion with the ccNSO: http://www.icann.org/meetings/lisbon/transcript-ccnso-members-27mar07.htm
More Board-level guidance is likely forthcoming as the project continues.
repb 04.20.07 at 8:57 am
Patrick
i guess the questions you posted accurately resume what the worries of the community would be.
I would had yet another question that surely would come out: “How could this have happened?”.
I think it is of ultimate importance to devise a Registry Failover strategy. But the single most important question should always be to create some process to avoid this catastrophic event to ever occur.
Ands i tend to agree with the idea of a back-up registry operator.
Rui Bebiano
WK 04.20.07 at 10:11 am
Well, we are here talking of Registry operators as far i say, including country and ccTLD. Some problems are related with the non backup or data via escrow, then i think some whois points.
Some suggestions and one question:
1 ) Some of the country, as Argentina, have not whois port 43 , is ok because they give free domains, but is bad for the backups of YOU, ICANN. What if in the cases no public port 43, you get as ICANN irrestricted access via port 43 in a range of ips ? We accept they dont want give to the public.
2 ) Need Be unified the results of the whois question. As example, some fixed chars. If eof asc 26 is used in much worlds, you can do a mark saying all the whois is finished, with a @@@ or the eof 26. Is a easy measure amd simplify some things.
3 ) At registrary level, Some TLDs not give all the data , thin, thick etc, is really SIMPLE, at elemental level, five in the answer the whois of the Registrar. Example, you can get in the whois 43 some as @@@whois.godaddy.com@@@ and all know in the future where are the other data.
The question…
the domains of spain, .es , have a public whois in port 43 ? if yes, where ?
WK 04.20.07 at 11:12 am
Clarify myself.
The marks i am saying, are in the gLTDs , the phrase “Whois Server:” Followed in that case for the whois.enom.com or similar.
Is some confuse the different whois gicvve sometimes the notice at the first, and other at the last. Anyway , some unified specs for thin or thick registrar whois structure, or RFC , can be useful.
elmister 04.20.07 at 4:41 pm
.es doesn’t have whois (port 43) service, all whois requests are redirected to nic.es website
Patrick Jones 04.21.07 at 11:40 am
Thanks Rui. We are working with the existing registries to ensure that such an event does not occur, and also trying to be prepared in the event that a temporary or long-term failure happens in the future. You’ll see more information on these efforts in the near future.
evden eve nakliyat 04.23.07 at 7:07 am
very nice blog.thanks you very much for your informations…mr sumi
Patrick Vande Walle 04.24.07 at 1:02 am
Patrick,
Many registries outsource the technical operations of the process to a third party. Some of these run the service for several TLDs. These technical operators in turn may outsource DNS services to another organization.
In case the technicals operators fail, this may mean that several TLDs may be down at the same time and that there are several potential points of failure.
If we can learn something from the RegisterFly case, it is that having to revert to courts is always slow and not always helpful for the registrant. Contracts with registries should allow ICANN to bypass the registry and its technical operators in emergency situations, without having to obtain a court order. The goal being to be as close as possible to zero downtime for the already registered domains.
Patrick Jones 04.24.07 at 3:22 am
Patrick, thank you for your comment. It would be interesting to know if there are actual examples of a failure at a technical operator that has resulted in more than one TLD being down at the same time.
susan 04.27.07 at 6:10 am
I am not very technical and I just need info on what happens to my domains now ?one has expired and teh other is locked in.pls someone kindly help ?what can i do about the expired one as i got no reminders to inform me of the expiry and register fly is NOT answering to my emails and phone calls.Please advise?
sm 04.27.07 at 6:31 am
Can somebody tell me, has registerfly stolen my domain as I look into who is info and I get this:
Whois Server: whois.registerfly.com
Referral URL: http://www.registerfly.com
Name Server: DNS1.EXPIREFLY.COM
Name Server: DNS2.EXPIREFLY.COM
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Status: clientUpdateProhibited
Updated Date: 03-apr-2007
Creation Date: 02-apr-2003
Expiration Date: 02-apr-2008
The site used to be mine and registerfly log in is showing it as expired but this is what I found on who is search?Please advise me
Patrick Jones 04.27.07 at 11:32 am
Susan, we have FAQs for RegisterFly customers that may answer your question. See http://blog.icann.org/?p=85#more-85.
Andrew Staroscik 04.28.07 at 4:05 am
ICANN do you now have RF’s user information as demanded by the cort order? Because they just closed my account. I was able to log in last night but now when I try the login system says it can not find my username. Is everyone having this problem or are they sinling me out because I complained?
I understand that ICANN is doing all it can but I am concerned that you will be unable to link individuals like me to their expired domains if RF does not cooperate. As of now I have an expired, locked domain, no account with RF and if you go on WHOIS it looks like RF is the registrant not me. It seems like part of this problem is the blind registration. There needs to be an external record of the individuals who companies like RF are holding domain names for.
Patrick Jones 04.28.07 at 4:40 am
Andrew, your question is related to RegisterFly, not a registry failure scenario. Please take a look at the latest headline on the ICANN website, or the latest blog post, as ICANN now has a court order for the imminent termination of RegisterFly.
sm 04.28.07 at 1:39 pm
I have the same problem as Andrew Staroscik .Please help as I have2domains with registerfly and one of them is dependent on the other.If I cannot acquire one the other would be impossible.But register fly has taken over one of them and that email holds the key to the other.Can someone kindly help.
sohbet 05.07.07 at 12:11 pm
thank you webmaster good blog
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