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Re: Present system of nTLD's

At 6:26 pm +0100 7/5/97, Niall O'Reilly is rumored to have typed:

> I think you need to do more to make this TLD registry aware of
> what makes your clients unhappy with the present system.  Remedies
> may be more attainable than you think.

Well, here is our Top 4 list of woes:

1) The lack of any time guarantees.
This was brought up when charging was proposed, and it was suggested that
it would be discussed in January. It's not that we think the TLD is slow,
but we (and our clients) would welcome a guranteed response time for either
accepting or rejecting an application. It's hard to tell a corporate client
working to a tight development cycle that we don't really know when her
domain will be registered. Having said this, response times are generally
good. A replacement for Pat when he goes on (well-needed) holidays would
also be welcome.

2) Ambiguous guidelines.
It's sometimes hard to sort out what's acceptable and what's not. Domains
have been registered that seem to contravene the guidlines, and other have
been rejected that seem to fall within them. As a partial solution, we
suggested that at the end of every month the TLD publish a list of all new
domains registered, and the registering company. Release of this
information could be made a condition of registration. This would "open up"
the process and make it seem less random, both to providers and companies.
This proposal met with no objections (as far as I can recall) but nothing
more was done. Can we think about it again?

3) Very stringent guidlines.
It often frustrates a corporate client who has 3 or 4 businesses trading
under one limited company to be told that they cannot register all their
legitimate business names. We realise that if more than one registration
per company were allowed, some people would try to register everything
under the sun, but could we reopen discussion on this area? There must be
some way to allow companies to register legitimate business names without
abuse.

4) Lack of security of the primary nameserver.
This is something that clients don't see for the most part, but it's a
serious concern for providers: midir.ucd.ie is arguably the most important
computer in Ireland. However, not only is it slow (not necessarily a
problem if the secondaries are well-chosen), but it is woefully insecure.
Remember, the reliability of your webserver or mailserver becomes
irrelevant if the primary NS is subverted.
Last I heard, midir had several hundered staff, student and guest accounts
on it, as well as several well-known security holes.
This scenario may have been acceptable for a free service, provided on a
goodwill basis by UCD, but it doesn't cut it as a commercial service.
When charging was proposed, we requested that security should be high on
the agenda for revenue spending. Is this going to happen? Has anything been
done already? Does anyone else think it should (or shouldn't) be a priority?

Maybe this will get the list going again :-)

Alex.


         Disclaimer: All of the above statements are true,
                           for sufficiently false values of true.