NZOC Monthly Report for November 2005

NZRS Report

NZRS have produced their monthly report for November 2005. Main points NZOC would like to highlight with Council are:

System availability for November was 99.98% against the SLA standard of 99.9%

Over the month there were a number of micro outages of the SRS totalling 4 minutes and 41 seconds.

The maintenance window for November was utilised

There were two scheduled outages during November totalling 6 hours. The first, on 20 November, was for the installation of an additional network connection in Wellington. The second was on 27 November and was a full disaster recovery test where Albany and the back-up operators took full responsibility for the SRS.

Performance times for key transactions for November are in the following table:

Transaction	Average Response Times (in seconds)
	As per SLA	November 2005
Domain Details Query	1.5	0.04
Domain Update	0.4	0.50
Domain Create	0.6	0.57
Get Message	0.6	0.04
Whois	0.5	0.20
UDAI Valid Query	0.5	0.28

DNS SLA standards met with 100% availability

Response Times

The figures are derived from the 'stress testing' of the name servers. 1201 UDP and 121 TCP transactions are used. The measurements for the Primary name servers and NS1, NS2 and NS3 are taken by running the programme on the individual servers.

DNS Server	Target millisec	Jun		Jul		August		September		October		November
		UDP	TCP	UDP	TCP	UDP	TCP	UDP	TCP	UDP	TCP	UDP	TCP
NS1	<5 / <50 m	0.1	0.32	0.11	0.31	0.1	0.33	0.11	0.31	0.11	0.30	0.11	0.31
NS2	<5 / <50	0.17	0.32	0.11	0.33	0.11	0.35	0.11	0.32	0.11	0.32	0.11	0.35
NS3	<5 / <50	0.38	1.04	0.4	1.05	0.4	1.06	0.22	1.06	0.37	1.05	0.37	1.08

The total number of WHOIS queries decreased from 1,897,000 to 1,631,000

The level of active .nz domain names increased from 203,994 to 207,228, a net increase of 3,234

2 .nz Policies and Procedures

2.1 Registrar Compliance

No major compliance issues were worked on during November. The Compliance Officer is following up a number of small matters with various registrars.

2.2 Policy Reviews

There are currently no reviews being undertaken

2.3 Applications

No applications were received under the Zone Transfer Policy and no applications for a new Second Level Domain were received.

3 Registrar authorisation and connection

Two new organisations were authorised as registrars during November – Primus Telecommunications (Australia) and Key-Systems GmbH (Germany). No further registrars connected to the production system during November.

4 Other .nz matters

Consultation started on a draft policy for the Dispute Resolution Service (DRS) planned for the .nz domain name space. This policy is based on the Nominet system with the policy largely as that used in the UK but modified to reflect the .nz requirements. One change is that the policy refers to an “unfair registration” rather than an “abusive registration”. Consultation on the draft policy started on 8 November 2005 and closes on 5 January 2006. At the time of writing this report no submissions had been received.

5 DRS Planning

Work during November included:

Development of a draft policy and publication of this for comments

NZOC had a conference call on 7 November. At that conference call, NZOC agreed to the following:

The mediation services would be outsourced and managed through a ‘first cab off the rank’ approach as used for the Experts

Eight Experts would initially be appointed to the panel, with a limited term on their agreement which allows the number of Experts to drop at renewal if required

The Chair of Experts will receive an annual stipend of $10,000 and may receive additional payments for undertaking specific tasks as Chair. The Chair should be appointed for an initial two years.

The Working Group will establish an appointment panel to make recommendations to NZOC regarding the selection of Experts. This appointment panel is to include the NZOC Chair

An invitation will be extended to Tony Willoughby and Emily Taylor to attend the initial training seminar for .nz Experts to be held on 31 March and 1 April 2006. A meeting of Experts will be held annually.

Development of the online filing of complaints, responses and replies has commenced. Work is being done in conjunction with the development of the DRS database.

Drafting of role descriptions, agreements and other documents relating to Mediators and Experts is well underway.

6 DNC Office

The DNC attended the ICANN conference in Vancouver from 30 November to 4 December. A copy of the travel report is enclosed as Appendix 2.

7 Financial

Financial results as at end of November 2005:

Office of the DNC	Month			YTD
INCOME	Actual	Budget	Variance	Actual	Budget	Variance
Authorisation Services	$ 2,000	$ 667		$ 14,000	$ 5,333	$ 8,667
Management Fees	$75,500	$75,500		$ 604,000	$ 604,000	$ -
TOTAL INCOME	$77,500	$76,167		$ 618,000	$ 609,333	$ 8,667
EXPENDITURES	Actual	Budget	Variance	Actual	Budget	Variance
Personnel and Staff costs	$36,203	$25,992	-$ 10,211	$191,340	$ 207,933	$ 16,593
Office and Admin	$ 7,204	$ 7,542	$ 338	$50,412	$ 60,333	$ 9,922
Professional Services	$ 8,935	$11,833	$ 2,899	$115,238	$ 94,667	-$ 20,571
Communications	$ 1,348	$ 2,250	$ 902	$8,193	$ 18,000	$ 9,807
.nz Oversight and Projects	$ 8,913	$13,917	$ 5,004	$77,047	$ 111,333	$ 34,287
DNC Registrar Activities	$ 526	$ 1,092	$ 566	$9,011	$ 8,733	-$ 278
International	$11,779	$12,708	$ 929	$91,267	$ 101,667	$ 10,399

TOTALS	$74,907	$75,333	$ 426	$ 542,507	$ 602,667	$ 60,160

Frank March

Chair, NZOC

Appendix 1

NZOC Note to Council – 21 December 2005

On 21 December 2005, the Domain Name Commissioner advised Domain Name Management Services Limited that InternetNZ was terminating the Authorisation Agreement with them, effective 29 December 2005. NZOC endorses the Domain Name Commissioner’s (”DNC”) decision that DNMSL be deauthorised as a .nz registrar.

The following press release was issued about this matter:

Domain name registrar de-authorised

A .nz registrar has been notified that it will lose its status as an authorised registrar.

Domain Name Commissioner Debbie Monahan said the move, against Domain Name Management Services Ltd (DNMSL), was to help ensure a fair and competitive market for those seeking .nz domain names.

The Domain Name Commissioner has been working with DNMSL for an extended period about whether DNMSL met the standards expected of a registrar.

Over the past 12 months there have been various breaches of required standards by DNMSL. These include registering customers’ domain names to a company closely related to DNMSL and allowing that company to speculate in domain names, despite also being a DNMSL reseller. DNMSL received a sanction for both of those breaches. The company has also twice been suspended by the registry for technical breaches.

DNMSL will be the only registrar to have been de-authorised.

Ms Monahan said the move should not affect those with .nz domain names registered with DNMSL because the company can arrange with another registrar to take over the management of those names and the change does not affect the operation of the names. The Domain Name Commissioner’s office will work with DNMSL on this process.

“Overall, we’re well served by .nz registrars and they play a key role in the broader .nz system. In this one instance, however, a registrar has operated their business contrary to the guiding principles, including fair and transparent market competition, and we have had to revoke its registration,” Ms Monahan said.

Appendix 2

DNC Travel Report – ICANN Vancouver

29 November to 3 December 2005

This report briefly covers some of the content of the meeting. Further information on the agenda, and links to documents, presentations and transcripts can be obtained at:

http://icann.org/meetings/vancouver/

wwTLD Meeting

All ccTLDs are invited to attend, and contribute, to this meeting. The agenda for the meeting was organised by Lesley Cowley from Nominet and the aim was to have something that would be of value to all ccTLD registry managers. As can be seen by the general session headings of the meeting, there was an operational focus on the content.

Copies of the presentations can be accessed through http://www.wwtld.org/meetings/cctld/20051129.Vancouver-documents.html

Measuring and Monitoring Registry Performance

New Zealand Registry case study, Debbie Monahan, .nz

This session started with a presentation on how .nz measures the performance of the registry, reporting on results and what information is public. A copy of the .nz presentation is at http://www.wwtld.org/meetings/cctld/20051129.Vancouver-Registry-Performance-dotNZ.ppt

I gave the presentation on behalf of InternetNZ and .nz. Dave Baker (Technical Manager for NZRS) accompanied me and assisted in addressing some of the questions asked. Following the presentation a number of people came up to Dave and/or I to ask further questions regarding our monitoring. It was clear from the questions asked that .nz does a lot more than some other ccTLDs in managing the performance of the registry and reporting publicly on that.

Korean Registry case study, Jae-Chul Seo .kr
www.nida.or.kr

The presentation from .kr provided an overview of how .kr was structured and its range of operations. They currently have approx 630,000 domain names and have recently completed an installation of a .kr name server mirror site in the eastern USA. They are expecting that US mirror site to process more than 20% of the total traffic being handled by the other seven name servers.

Korea has developed a “Master Plan” to facilitate active support for the realisation of “u-Korea”. This plan incorporates such functions as ENUM, RFID and IPv6 but also incorporates other related requirements such as a legal revision and changes to legislation.

Verisign measuring & Monitoring, Bart Mackay
http://verisign.com/

Verisign currently undertakes a range of monitoring on their various registries and their performance. Bart Mackay expressed a desire to work with other ccTLD managers on establishing benchmarks and options for monitoring and management so that all ccTLDs could learn from each other. The point was made that ccTLD managers are in a unique position of being in the same business as each other but not in competition. There was agreement at the meeting that more work could be done on sharing information about registry monitoring and performance.

Marketing

Two presentations were given on the issue of marketing with Edward Viltz giving an overview of the .org organisation and how they operate as a non-profit. John Kane then spoke from a registrar’s view and commented that the gTLD area is straightforward with the relationship being registry ? registrar ? registrant whereas with some ccTLD registrants can go directly to the registry for changes, registrations etc. There is a challenge for registrars in having to know the different rules operating in each ccTLD.

In response to John Kane’s comment that most ccTLDs do not promote themselves, it was commented that most ccTLDs are not really that interested in the volume of domain names so tend to focus on education of registrants rather than promotion.

Technical section

e-IANA update, Andrzej Bartosiewicz, .pl
http://www.wwtld.org/meetings/cctld/20051129.Vancouver-e-IANA-AndrzejBartosiewicz.pdf

This presentation gave an update on the e-IANA system going through the work based on a Centr document produced on e-IANA. It also involved a demonstration of how it operates utilising PGP keys and other security steps to manage access for requesting changes etc.

NZRS have been monitoring e-IANA through communications and information obtained through the Centr technical mailing list. Dave Baker from NZRS is also on the mailing list for e-IANA.

IANA services, David Conrad, IANA
http://www.wwtld.org/meetings/cctld/20051129.Vancouver-State-of-IANA-DavidConrad.ppt

The new General Manager for IANA provided his overview of the status of IANA and work done. He commented that a lot of their work is technically trivial but that conforming to policies and contractual obligations is what takes a lot of time.

Problems he’s aware of at IANA are included in the presentation along with areas of work that are being undertaken. He set out his vision including that of restoring trust in IANA.

Security & stability update, Steve Crocker
http://www.wwtld.org/meetings/cctld/20051129.Vancouver-SSAC-SteveCrocker.ppt

Steve Crocker chairs the Security and Stability Committee of approx 20 experts, and is the representative on the ICANN board. DNSSEC is a key topic being managed by the committee, along with IDNs and alternate roots. DNSSEC protocol deployment has been spun off as a parallel, large effort in its own right. A workshop is planned for January in Europe to test the latest DNSSEC version.

www.dnssec.org

www.dnssec-deployment.org

Registry Case Studies

CIRA case study, Norm Ritchie, .ca
http://www.wwtld.org/meetings/cctld/20051129.Vancouver-dotCA-Yesterday-Today-Tomorrow-NormRitchie.ppt

This presentation set out how .ca is operating and illustrated the impact on their ccTLD from changes made a while ago allowing registrations at the second level. They have maintained restrictions on residency so that .ca is seen as “Canadian” and this has led to an improvement in the ratio of .com to .ca domain names held by Canadian registrants, though .com names are still highly preferred.

WHOIS / Privacy meeting

This meeting was also partly titled “Building Bridges” and consisted of three sessions following a presentation from the Canadian Privacy Commissioner’s office.

The first session was titled “Coming into Compliance: ccTLDs change their WHOIS databases” and the three speakers, (from .ca, .uk and .jp) outlined how their registry had changed its WHOIS public information as a result of privacy legislation introduced. Each took a slightly different approach with .ca electing to remove the display of personal information for individual registrants, .uk giving individual registrants the ability to request that their information be withheld, and .jp getting registrants to sign up to a statement that had them agreeing that the information be displayed or the name could not be registered. The .nz position is along the lines of that taken by .jp.

In the second session, “Beyond WHOIS: Telecoms and Internet Privacy”, the speakers discussed how the telecommunications industry managed the information that they had. They have a lot of information that is required for providing services, billing etc and require a warrant for some of the information to be released. With the increasing demand on technology, and the information it does hold, there is an issue about who should pay to provide the information requested as new technologies are implemented. Legislation dictates a lot of the actions undertaken and the Internet is no different in that it is governed by the general laws. An analogy was drawn between 0800 numbers (easy to remember) and finding out who that was leased to, and WHOIS information for domain names.

As part of the third session, “Ideas for the future of the gTLD WHOIS databases: some proposals for reform”, the conflict between different groups and what they expect from WHOIS information was apparent. The Noncommercial Users Constituency does not believe that registrant information should be available and that focus should go on improving the value of the technical information held. In contrast, the US Federal Trade Commissioner considered that consumers should be able to obtain sufficient information to identify and contact anyone doing business on the Internet and that those people shouldn’t be able to hide behind a non-commercial name. Other speakers provided options and their views on how changes might be made to WHOIS it try and balance consumer’s privacy interests with other interests such as protecting intellectual property rights. There was no consensus view of the best way to achieve this.

ccNSO meeting

This has been reported elsewhere so a few brief notes.

A copy of the agenda for the ccNSO meeting can be seen at http://ccnso.org/files/ccnso_agenda_Vancouver.pdf

ccPDP

Bart Boswinkel gave an update on the pdp process including that 29 members out of 45 voted so the required quorum of 50% was met. All resolutions were adopted with no votes against and a maximum of 2 abstentions. This will now be put through the rest of the process including Council approval and the ICANN Board procedures for changing by-laws.

Accountability Frameworks

Working Group Chaired by Hiro Hotta – document produced is at

http://ccnso.icann.org/announcements/af-wg-interim-report-final-17nov05.pdf

Comments close on 9 December then go to Council.

Budget working groups

- One working on a budget with ICANN – how much should ccTLDs pay?

- The other the apportionment group – how should that budget be allocated to ccTLDs?

Hope to publish a report covering a number of different models for apportioning the fees that consider worthy of further discussion. Two are banding models, one voluntary through self selection and the other based on number of registered domain names. Fee per domain name model also posed.

ICANN have provided a breakdown of the costs associated with ccTLDs and what they would be looking to have the ccTLDs cover. This document had only just been produced and was to be circulated for comment.

IANA

This session largely reflected the information provided at the wwTLD meeting. In addition to David Conrad, the meeting also heard from Kim Davies, appointed to the new position of IANA Names Liaison.

WSIS -- Post Summit Environment

This session involved a number of different speakers giving their impressions of the process and the outcome. They included Ambassador Janis Karklins (President of WSIS Tunis Phase), Markus Kummer, (Executive Coordinator, Secretariat of the Working Group on Internet Governance) and various constituency representatives.

Keith Davidson, Executive Director of InternetNZ, was included in one of the panels to comment on his experience, having participated in the process. Keith commented that the WGIG process indicated that it was possible to go through an open consultation process, however he was concerned that during Prepcom 3 in particular, there appeared to be a different interpretation of open consultation.

Public Forum issues

Verisign settlement

One of the issues at the ICANN Vancouver conference was the proposed agreement with ICANN. Many of the constituencies have expressed concerns about the current proposal and have articulated their concerns to ICANN.

Paul Twomey, CEO and President of ICANN, publicly stated that the agreement was only proposed, it wasn’t settled, and assured everyone that they had come to Vancouver to listen. ICANN were compiling a list of all the issues raised and were going to consider those and then feedback to the community. The reasons for entering into an agreement with Verisign were discussed along with the benefits of settling disputes between the two parties. ICANN wants to be a good steward of the space and Verisign has an interest in quickly implementing new services so they are hoping a satisfactory agreement can be reached. This issue is ongoing and is well reported through various media.

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