Domains & DNS: November 2005 Archives

What does the future hold for the IE namespace, the IEDR and their clients?

Damien Mulley is interviewing several of the NetVisionary nominees. He interviewed me via email last week and it can be read online here: The accidental technologist - Interview with Michele Neylon from Blacknight Internet Solutions

Who actually controls the internet? Karl Auerbach's latest post may upset some people, but it does point out some very important facts ICANN would have us believe that the 'net is not controlled by the US, but is that really true? Look what happened with .xxx

Do you actually own your domain name?

One of the most common issues faced by server admins is spam. If you are not concerned about protecting your users from receiving it, you are probably worried about your users sending it (intentionally or otherwise).

The Irish government will release the budget for the next 12 months shortly, so the journos are dedicating plenty of column inches to the preliminary figures.

The upcoming launch of .eu will attract more and more media attention over the coming months as we go through the various sunrise periods prior to the public launch.

The much awaited .eu will be launching very soon with Sunrise 1 taking place during the month of December. In common with the launch of other TLDs, the launch of .eu is being done in phases:

• Sunrise 1 - trademark holders
• Sunrise 2 - Prior rights - business names / company names etc
• Landrush - everything else

There is quite a bit of hype surrounding the entire thing, but there was plenty of hype with the .info launch also and that has proved to be a damp squid. If you are a trademark holder or wish to protect your brand's identity then the .eu launch is important. It's a lot cheaper to get your domain name now than have to litigate later, although Eurid have some procedures in place to help mitigate the possible problems with cybersquatting. Of course the big question is whether or not .eu will take off. I'm not 100% sure. It does open up certain channels that other TLDs do not offer - .eu is a regional TLD, which gives it a certain value that a gTLD or ccTLD currently does not offer. Will that work in the market? Will people react to it and understand what it represents? That is hard to say. Many small businesses still do not really understand the difference between a ccTLD and a gTLD. For many there can be only one domain extension - .com - everything else is just background noise. If you're involved in the domain / hosting business this kind of attitude is more than a little frustrating at times. It is perfectly understandable of course, but you'd really like to have clients who knew how important protecting their identity was, instead of coming to you later, when "their" name has been taken asking you how they can "fix" it. Enough of the day dreaming, however. In the Irish market there are two companies (or three if you ignore that one is simply a new face of an existing one) that are fully accredited Eurid registrars. Eurid had originally confused the market by stating that there could be no reselling of .eu domains, however this has since been clarified, so companies, such as mine, are now in a position to register .eu on behalf of our clientele. Oddly enough the pre-launch of .eu coincides with our signing of an agreement with Ascio to handle a very wide choice of ccTLDs, so not only are we taking orders for .eu, but also .se, .nl,.be etc. etc

The Spanish domain registry opens up starting this morning:

The corporate public entity Red.es announces the gradual beginning of the registration operations of domain names under “.es”, according to the rules established by the New Plan of Domain Names under the country code corresponding to Spain “.es”, passed by the Order ITC/1542/2005 (Official Journal of May 31, 2005) for next November 8, at 7:00 according to the following calendar: * On November 8 it will be admitted applications of domain names under “.es” that begin with a number or any letter from “a” to “b” inclusively. * On November 9 it will be admitted applications of domain names under “.es” that begin with a number or any letter from “a” to “e” inclusively, since 7 A.M. of such day. * On November 10 it will be admitted applications of domain names under “.es” that begin with a number or any letter from “a” to “n” inclusively, since 7 A.M. of such day. * On November 11 it will be admitted any domain name under “.es” according to the National Plan of Domain Names since 7 A.M. of such day. * Any application that does not fulfil this planning will not be admitted to be processed. We also communicate that the Registry will be closed since 00:00 until 07:00 of November 8, with the purpose of doing the migration of the information services and doing the previous necessary actions for the opening of the Registry according to the new National Plan of Domain Names.

Taken from Esnic Under the new rules the .es namespace will be as open to the public as .it and other European ccTLDs.

One of the things that has always caused confusion for people is domain usage.

The IEDR, as mentioned here in the past, has been making changes and improvements to their systems and services on an ongoing basis.