NZOC Committee Report to Council 08/11/02
NZOC Report to Council November 2002
Council
InternetNZ
- SRS Implementation
The first stage of the implementation over the weekend of 12 October went according to plan and the SRS was formally implemented at 1am on Monday 14 October.
Due to the primary servers not arriving in time to be installed for the SRS implementation, the zone files continued to be pushed to the DNS from the DRS until later in October. This was a planned contingency and worked well. Zone file pushes are now being undertaken from the SRS.
At the end of October, the SRS had not had any unplanned outages. Upgrades are timed for 11am on Tuesdays. This is the time that the DRS is down for 15 minutes for Domainz to prepare the zone files (note: this process will continue until the first competitive registrar connects and undertakes transactions in December) so there is no impact on SRS availability over that period.
There was reasonable media coverage of the successful SRS implementation, including brief articles in The Dominion and The NZ Herald as well as being covered in IDG.
- Registrar matters
As at the end of October, applications had been received from eight organisations for authorisation as a registrar. It is expected the first registrars will be authorised by the middle of November. The DNC has also been in contact with a further 13 organisations who are currently planning and who are expected to apply for authorisation. At this early stage, the previous expectation of having a competitive .nz market by March 2003 looks like it will be met.
- General .nz matters
3.1 .bank.nz Second Level Domain
Sue Leader, the InternetNZ Executive Director, has been advancing this process for the DNC so that the DNC could concentrate on the SRS implementation. A request for votes has been organised by Sue and this starts on 3 November, extending for two weeks.
3.2 DomainNamesNZ
The DNC was alerted to a mass mailing campaign undertaken by an organisation trading as DomainNamesNZ. The company involved is Internet Registrations Australia, and they have previously undertaken mass marketing exercises but never before in the .nz domain.
The main concern was that they were offering a two-year term of registration where that is not yet available as an option. The DNC tracked down and spoke to a couple of managers, including the Marketing Manager who set up the campaign. The company maintained that it was an inadvertent error. They were given the benefit of the doubt but were informed that the DNC still considered their letter misleading and that a press release would go out saying that. DomainNamesNZ viewed the release and agreed to the content, including a final paragraph acknowledging their error and that they would not accept any two-year registrations. This has been followed up with a formal letter from the DNC reaffirming the .nz policies and procedures and that targeted campaigns such as that they undertook is not permitted in the .nz environment. DomainNamesNZ would not disclose the New Zealand organisation they would register names through. As at the end of October there is no pattern to indicate any unusual registration patterns.
- Office of the DNC
Beverley Irvine resigned and her final day of work was 22 October 2002.
Chris Wild signed a contract and starts work 4 November. Chris has just returned from living in the UK. There he spent a few years working for Nominet UK, the .uk registry. His industry knowledge will be of great value to the DNC office.
The trademark application for the DNC logo has been accepted in four classes. It will be registered in three months if no objections are raised.
- Financial
The September figures mark the end of the first quarter of the DNC office budget (2nd quarter of the financial year). On the above figures, expenditure is significantly under budget for the month and for the YTD.
EOY forecasts indicate that the DNC budget will be underspent in most areas but will be overspent in professional services.
Frank March
Chair
.nz Oversight Committee
