Introduction of the new Domainz system
A couple of days ago I got mail from Andrew Mason, a consultant acting for Domainz, who posed a set of questions to me about Netlink's readiness to adopt the new system. I have answered that noting a number of reservations including lack of whois server to enable easy checking of existing records and the apparent lack of consensus among many of the industry players about how things should be done. I'm trying to gauge who is happy with the *technical* interface. (I know that many are unhappy with the politico-commercial position.) If everyone else is ecstatically happy I'll accept the judgement of my peers and get on with things, do without the long promised whois server and check all my domains using the web interface. If however you are unhappy about how things are progressing let's put our heads together and go back to ISOCNZ with an open letter requesting them to ensure that Domainz starts acting as a public service organisation and not as a business solely focussed on making money and using its monopoly postion to dictate to the NZ Internet community. --------- To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to majordomo(a)list.waikato.ac.nz where the body of your message reads: unsubscribe nznog
Andy wrote:-
If however you are unhappy about how things are progressing let's put our heads together and go back to ISOCNZ with an open letter requesting them to ensure that Domainz starts acting as a public service organisation and not as a business solely focussed on making money and using its monopoly postion to dictate to the NZ Internet community.
I think our view has been fairly well expressed. We have decided to withdraw from name registration in .nz rather than continue to deal with the domainz / isocnz juggernaut. This will regretfully cause considerable frustration for our customers, as they will need to obtain name service for their domain at 2day.com and then visit domainz to register. When the domainz ceo is sacked or removed from a position of responsibility, we will review our position. I am not sure what you think an open letter will do Andy. Many of us have already signed a petition expressing our needs, which for the most part have not changed. After many months we got a WHOIS that did not deliver live data and was yet another challenge for parsing. Even the hine review is likely to be referred to domainz for consideration. They will of course recommend to ISOCNZ that the status quo is the way forward. If ISP's want a solution to this problem, we have to all work together. Unfortunatly, most folk simply don't consider it important enough. Regards Peter Mott Chief Enthusiast 2day.com -/- --------- To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to majordomo(a)list.waikato.ac.nz where the body of your message reads: unsubscribe nznog
On Wed, Apr 19, 2000 at 11:56:21AM +1200, Peter Mott wrote:
I think our view has been fairly well expressed. We have decided to withdraw from name registration in .nz rather than continue to deal with the domainz / isocnz juggernaut.
I think the overwhelming impression I formed during the time I was looking at the juggernaut in question was that it was designed and implemented as an end-user customer-care system, with a bulk interface bolted on as an afterthought. The bulk interface was correspondingly unpolished, and the designers really seem to have worked under the impression that large agents would use warm bodies pointing and clicking in preference to an automated registration process. Some design issues are: + lack of consistent interface; + continued reliance on e-mail batched submission mechanism, with no consideration given to a real-time interface; + e-mail transaction format which is barely consistent between templates, and which is expensive and non-trivial to parse accurately; + minimal attention paid to security concerns; + inconsistent registry schema (compare normalisation of nameholder contact records with tech contact records); + radically-changed authorisation scheme (per-nameholder rather than per-domain) with fluffy commercial incentive to reducing nameholder id duplication rather than any attempt at a technical solution; + no attempt made to conform to standards (real, de-facto or otherwise) in nomenclature, schema or interface (the use of ICANN terms for Domainz's own business model entities is at best a peculiar smokescreen). Specific migration issues are: + lack of any backwards compatability interface; + lack of useful documentation; + constantly moving goalposts; + arbitrary process of assigning nameholders to agents which has been demonstrated to be inaccurate; + threat of new, improved (i.e. different, presumably non-backwards- compatible) machine interface to Domainz in "phase two". Note that, as usual, I am specifically not making any comment about the network infrastructure which is planned to host the new system. I am not particularly keen to go into these points in any more detail. The iterative process of make-suggestion, bang-head-on-table, make-suggestion, bang-head-on-table is completely unproductive as far as realising any improvement is concerned, and frankly it's expensive on tables. This is specifically not a note which expects a reply from Domainz. I am not interested in any "clarification" of points raised above. "My regards" Joe --------- To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to majordomo(a)list.waikato.ac.nz where the body of your message reads: unsubscribe nznog
participants (3)
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Andy Linton -
Joe Abley -
Peter Mott