[registrars] gTLD Registry Maintenance Notices

[Tim Ruiz]

Thanks Mike. I appreciate the insight and will certainly use it.

Regarding Christophe's comments on the notices in general I have run into
similar problems with my CEO getting transfer notices, for example, because
he was the Main registry contact. We were able to take care of that, but
also, with one registry, I had to use the address of an email distribution
list to control who got what.

I wonder if it wouldn't be better for Registrars if the Registries only used
the contact data to make direct one off contacts via phone or post when
something is more urgent or needs tracking. Email is not a very timely or
traceable mechanism. The contacts would also be the registered parties who
could call for support, etc.

Then for all of the email notices they provide a way for us to simply submit
email addresses for them that could be distribution accounts. That would
include:

-- Transfer notifications
-- Fund Balance and Billing notifications, including urgent* notices
regarding low balances or getting shutdown.
-- Maintenance/outage notifications, including urgent* notices for
unexpected problems or emergency maintenance.
-- General notifications such as for Web casts.
-- Other urgent* technical notifications such as warning notices about
misuse of connections.

*I believe some urgent notices also warrant a phone call and/or even
registered mail.

Tim


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-registrars at gnso.icann.org
[mailto:owner-registrars at gnso.icann.org] On Behalf Of Michael D. Palage
Sent: Sunday, April 25, 2004 9:40 AM
To: registrars at dnso.org
Cc: dam at icann.org; Marie. Zitkova; Miriam Sapiro
Subject: RE: [registrars] gTLD Registry Maintenance Notices

Tim:

I think you raise a number of valid points in your email that merit some
further discussion. Therefore, I have copied on this email the following
people that may be able to assist in moving this discussion forward. Marie
Zitkova (Chair of the Registry Constituency); Miriam  Sapiro (Consultant
working on the new gTLD evaluation process), and Tina Dam (ICANN's Chief
gTLD Registry Liaison).

Just a couple of comments that you or others may wish to take into
consideration in any further discussion.

I think Miriam Sapiro is someone that you should contact because I think
your comments should be incorporated into the gTLD evaluation process. I
believe that by working with new registry operators that will be emerging in
the future, ICANN accredited registrars can take a more proactive approach
to working with registry operators to develop more registrar friendly
business practices. The fact that some of these new registry operators are
likely to be using existing registry infrastructure operators may also help
in speeding adoption across other gTLDs.

One of the biggest complaints that registrars had back in the beginning was
the $100,000 Surety Instrument that VeriSign required of each accredited
registrar. The new registries, however, replaced this requirement with a
comprehensive general liability insurance policy naming the registry
operator as a specific insured. Following this development, VeriSign
registry (the incumbent) changed its business practices during the Shanghai
ICANN regional meeting to be in line with this registrar friendly business
practice. I just offer this as an example that you can teach old dogs
(incumbent registries) new tricks.

With regard to the potential use of the PDP, I will leave this to one of the
Registrar Names Council representatives to comment on. However, I believe
working directly with the registries may provide a quicker path to
resolution.

With regard to your suggestion about publicly posting all notices on the
gTLD website, some things you may wish to consider are the following. First,
there is no requirement for ICANN accredited registries to participate in
the ICANN registry constituency. This is no different than the current
approach within the registrar constituency where participation is voluntary.
There may also be some security concerns that would need to be evaluated
before making this information publicly available.

Overall, I think your ideas are worth pursuing.

Best regards,

Michael D. Palage

P.S. Regarding Christophe's comments about registries sending email
notifications to all email addresses on file, I think there are two points
worth noting. First, I fully agree with Christophe that registries should
make selective use of communications to the appropriate registrar personnel.
One of the problems that I have heard from some registries is that
registrars are not very good at keeping their contact information up to
date. This may be why the registries error on the side of over notification.



-----Original Message-----
From: owner-registrars at gnso.icann.org
[mailto:owner-registrars at gnso.icann.org]On Behalf Of Tim Ruiz
Sent: Sunday, April 25, 2004 8:21 AM
To: registrars at dnso.org
Subject: [registrars] gTLD Registry Maintenance Notices


All,

I realize we are dealing with many more important issues right now, but I'd
like to bring up the issue of gTLD Registry Maintenance notices for some
discussion.

Right now there is no standard form of email notice between the Registries.
In fact, there doesn't appear to even be a standard form of email notice
within a single registry.

We think it would be helpful if that changed. It is difficult otherwise to
have any automated process to parse this information. We would like to do
that in addition to having these notices find there their way to a human
reader. I think this is going to be a growing concern as the number of gTLDs
increases.

We would propose at least 1 and 2 of the following, but 3 & 4 may also be
helpful:

1. That there be a standard form of advance notice for gTLD Registry
outages. This notice would contain only outage information for the gTLDs
that are affected. If the Registry also manages ccTLDs, they would NOT be
included in these notices. For example, Go Daddy does not offer CN or TW,
yet we continue get notices for these intermingled with the BIZ notices.

2. That there be a standard form of notice for the START, EXTENDED, and
COMPLETED notifications sent during the outage. These for us are the most
important ones to be able to automate the parsing of.

3. That there be a new report (in a standard format) posted by each gTLD
registry that contains outage notifications as far in advance as they have
them planned. Of course, it would not be expected that it be updated during
an outage.

4. That planned outages be posted on the gTLD Website in a public ally
accessible form. For example, VeriSign requires logging in to their
Registrar Extranet to see these. We believe all registrants should have
access to at least the basic notification information.

I don't know if this would have to be a PDP. Perhaps it is something we
could negotiate with the Registry Constituency and get adopted as a Best
Practice.

Other ideas, suggestions?

Tim