Happy New Year to you all, The DNS Spring Cleaning Project has now entered its final four full days. http://www.domainz.net.nz/newsstand/stories/SpringCleaning.html The program specially developed for analysis of the .nz domain space expires by January 7, so there is still time to take advantage right now. PROGRESS SO FAR ================ To-date, the results have been impressive. By last week, over 700 individual visitors had been to the site to download almost 550 copies of the special .nz program. Our surveys tell us that you've made changes to you DNS configurations that have fixed around 4,000 errors that the .nz program picked up. That is tremendous, so thanks. We've also seen significant reductions in the number of .nz domain names showing errors, moving from 28% of the .nz Register down to 25%. More detailed results of the last survey can be found at the Men and Mice site, http://sc.menandmice.com/statistic.html .nz TECHNICAL CONTACT DETAILS ============================ On a separate but connected note, we emailed all technical contacts listed in the .nz DNS 2 weeks ago with some startling results -- there was a bounce rate around 14% !!!! One purpose of the Technical contact is to be reachable so as to deal with any technical issues relating to the hosting of a domain -- this cannot happen where the email address is bouncing :() The key reasons that we could ascertain for this high rate were three fold:- 1. Using personal names -------------------------------------------- There are a considerable number of ISP's that use an individual person's name (eg fred(a).. or mary(a)...) rather than a functional name (eg dns(a)... or soa(a)...), and most bounced mail came from the former category. ISP's should consider the use of functional names for their technical contact rather than individual names, as the former have much more "permanence". 2. Name Holder listed as technical contact ------------------------------------------------------------------ There are a few ISP's that put the Name Holder's name as the technical contact and this does not appear to be updated as the Name Holder's details change. Moreover, most Name Holders who fell into this category and responded to our email knew precious little about the technical details of hosting their domain name. The technical contact should be someone who understands the technical issues of a domain name. Typically we would expect to see the organisation with the technical wherewithal to host the domain name shown in this field. ISP's should check to ensure that they list the appropriate technical contact person. 3. Not keeping details current ------------------------------------------------ The final category reflected organisations that had not kept current the domain name information. In many cases, it followed the move of a domain name from one ISP to another. Generally the IP details had been updated to make the domain work, but no other details (Name Holder, Billing, Technical contact) had changed. ISP's need to ensure that they do keep all domain details up-to-date, particularly when a domain name is moved from another ISP. My thanks for your time, My regards, PATRICK J O'BRIEN P.S. === Remember, there are only 4 more days to use the special .nz DNS program. Do take the time to use the program to check out the health of your .nz domain names, http://sc.menandmice.com/getit.html Fax: (04) 473-4569 Voice: (04) 473-4567 Mail: P.O.BRIEN(a)DOMAINZ.NET.NZ Web: http://www.DOMAINZ.NET.NZ --------- To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to majordomo(a)list.waikato.ac.nz where the body of your message reads: unsubscribe nznog