Report on .nz to go to Isocnz meeting

By ADAM GIFFORD

An Internet Society working group has come up with the final draft of a system to manage the New Zealand country code top level domain (.nzccTLD).

The proposed registry system will be considered by the Isocnz council on Thursday. Working group member Rick Shera said the meeting should appoint an implementation manager, to roll out the new system.

Management of the .nz registry was originally done by volunteers at Waikato and Victoria Universities, but the responsibility passed to Isocnz, which set up a company, Domainz, to handle the task.

Domainz' management came under fire from some internet service providers and companies which handle registration of internet addresses, and the criticism increased after the bug-ridden roll out of the new Domain website, developed by Advantage Group subsidiary Glazier Systems.

At the Isocnz annual meeting, the critics voted to split the registry function from Domainz and create a new shared registry system.

The working group, chaired by Professor John Hine of Victoria University, was asked to spell out how such as system should work.

Mr Shera said most name-holders - those who own an internet name ending in .nz - would not see great deal of change.

"It will give the registrars in the market a lot more opportunity to offer different services, more variety, different alternatives," he said.

"Currently everyone who wants to register in the .nz name space has to go to Domainz to access the registry.

"This will allow accredited registrars to interact directly with the registry."

Mr Shera said because Domainz had an annual billing system, many registrars refused to take over billing their own customers for domain name renewals.

This meant name-holders would receive bills directly from Domainz, causing some confusion.

Issues such as the future role of Domainz and how much the new registry will charge for its monopoly services are yet to be worked out.

The working group report recommended factors that Isocnz should take into account when revising its charging policy, saying the aim should be to recover both its own costs and those of a ccTLD manager.

The report reconfirmed the key recommendation from the Isocnz annual meeting, that the registry focus on registrars as its customers, rather than allowing individual name-holders.

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