NZOC Monthly Report for February 2007

NZRS Report

NZRS have produced their monthly report for February 2007. Main points NZOC would like to highlight with Council are:

§          System availability for February was 99.96% against the SLA standard of 99.9%

Total unscheduled outage time of 16 mins 5 secs was due to micro outages.

§         The scheduled maintenance window was utilised on 25 February 2007.

§          Performance times for key transactions for February are in the following table:

§              DNS SLA standards met

Server                           % Availability

Performance Stress Testing

The figures are derived from the 'stress testing' of the name servers. 1201 UDP and 121 TCP transactions are used.   Measurements are in milli-seconds.

The measurements for the Primary name servers and NS1, NS2 and NS3 are taken by running the programme on the individual servers.

SRS Zone Pushes

These figures show the average time taken from the point that the first Primary begins the zone push to the time that the last of the secondary’s acknowledges that it is up to date.

§              The total number of WHOIS queries decreased from 1,934,000 to 1,872,000.

§              The level of active .nz domain names increased from 264,711 to 268,744.  An increase of 4,033.

.nz Policies and Procedures

2.1       Registrar Compliance

§          No new compliance issues arose this month

2.2              Policy Reviews

§          A second consultation period on a paper regarding the review of the Registering, Managing and Cancelling Domain Names Policy finished on 14 February 2007.  Nine submissions were received by the closing date.  These can be seen at http://dnc.org.nz/rmc-2ndconsult.

2.3              Applications 

§          An application was received for a new second level domain – bank.nz.  The application, together with the proposed moderation policy, has been published for comment.  In addition, letters have been sent to various organisations that might be interested in the application. 

§          An application for access to the zone file was received.  This application is still being evaluated.

Registrar authorisation and connection

One new registrar was authorised in February, Red Spider Limited.  No more registrars connected to the production environment over the month.

Other .nz matters

§          Elections for the Registrar Advisory Group (RAG) were completed early February with the successful candidates being Lucretia Gilkison (2day.com), Brett Wright (Freeparking), Glen Eustace (GodZone Internet Services), Tim John (Domainz), Steven Gore (Orcon) and Lee Miller (RegisterDirect / 1st Domains).   There was a RAG meeting held on 15 February with the main topic of discussion the RMC review and the submissions received.  Notes from the RAG meeting are at http://dnc.org.nz/content//rag_minutes_150207.pdf.

§          NZOC is due to meet on 1 March with one of the main items on the agenda being discussion on the submissions received for the Registering, Managing and Cancelling Domain Names Policy review.

Dispute Resolution Service (DRS)

For the month of February 2007, there were 7 new electronic complaints submitted.  Of these, 2 were deemed invalid leaving 5 new complaints to progress through the system.  This number of electronic complaints for February is marginally larger than for January when we received 5 electronic complaints of which 4 (80%) were deemed invalid.

15 valid complaints are currently progressing through the system.

The first 9 months of the DRS to 28 February 2007 has seen 78 complaints lodged with 28 (36%) ruled invalid.

Of the 50 valid complaints:

8 (16%) settled on initial notification, prior to mediation

19 disputes went to mediation, with 11 of those successfully settling.

9 went through to Expert decision with 5 ordered transferred, 2 being dismissed and 2 awaiting Expert decision.

DNC Office   

§          The DNC gave a presentation to a Fraud and Security Network in Wellington.  In order to cater for a wide range of audience, the presentation covered the basics such as the structure of a domain name and how to determine what the domain name is in cases of phishing with long URL addresses.  The .nz policies and procedures were covered in relative detail with a number of questions from law enforcement about their options in various situations.

§          APTLD held a non-technical training programme in conjunction with their latest meeting in Bali late February.  The DNC attended as one of the .nz representatives and a travel report can be read in Appendix 1.

Financial

Financial report as at the end of February 2007

Frank March

Chair, NZOC

Appendix 1

APTLD Meeting – Bali, February 2007

This was the AGM meeting of the APTLD and, as per previous years, the meeting was held in conjunction with the APRICOT (Asia Pacific Regional Internet Conference on Operational Technologies - http://www.apricot.net/ )

Prior to the actual meeting, a two day non-technical training workshop was held.  This was the first such workshop undertaken using the content developed by the APTLD Training Group of which .nz was a contributor.

Content for two training courses was developed.  One course is focused on the technical operation of a ccTLD and incorporates such things as technical registry options and DNS.  It is planned for this course to be delivered by, and at, the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) in Bangkok.

The second course is titled the ‘Non-technical’ training and its content was planned to address all the ‘administrative’ functions concerning a ccTLD such as governance, policy principles (e.g. registration policies) structural models and registrar accreditation.

Originally the programme for the training was as per that published at http://aptld.org/meeting/2007/02_Bali/training.html.  However, there were issues regarding the arrival and availability of presenters and so the timetable was rearranged. 

The revised schedule followed the following order:

§          Registration Policies and Case Studies

§          Marketing and Promotion

§          Registry / Registrar Model

§          Institutional Frameworks for ccTLD Administration

§          Best Practices of a ccTLD Registry

§          Registrar Accreditation Policies

§          Global and Regional Organisations Related to ccTLD

§          Second Level Domains and Sub-domains

§          Internet Governance

§          IDN and Deployment Experiences

§          Domain Name Registration Systems

§          Scaling up Registry Operations

This revised schedule meant that the presentations didn’t necessarily follow a logical order.   However, the training was well received and the content wide ranging and applicable to the ccTLD managers.  A range of different ccTLD with different structures and policy frameworks were present but the format of the training didn’t always make it possible for the alternative approaches to be clearly expressed / articulated.  Some presenters covered off options within their session but there were situations where only one approached was outlined.

One session (the one on Institutional Frameworks for ccTLD Administration – Policy Framework and Local Governance Issues) involved three different ccTLD managers (including .nz) setting out their local governance and policy framework.  This clearly identified three different approaches, enabling comparison and discussion.

Within the APTLD region, there is a wide range of different structures and policies for governing a ccTLD.  Feedback has been provided on the training with a recommendation that we should seek to provide brief information on different options for operation and then enable debate and discussion to ensure that people attending the training can get sufficient information to enable them to make an informed decision about what might best suit their local Internet community and their ccTLD.

At this stage it is envisaged that the non-technical training will be offered as part of the next APTLD meeting to be held in Dubai in June.  Changes will be made to the format of the training, reflecting the feedback received from the Bali meeting.

Following the two day training, the APTLD meeting was held over one day.  The agenda for the day can be seen at http://aptld.org/meeting/2007/02_Bali/agenda.html.

As has been the trend for the last few APTLD meetings, the day started with an overview from the local host as to how their ccTLD operates and ICT generally in the country.  The presentation for Indonesia (http://aptld.org/meeting/2007/02_Bali/APTLD_DOT_ID.pdf) outlined the efforts being taken to make .id names more appealing.  Currently the process takes a day to register a new .id domain name, assuming the application is complete.  It can take up to five days if there are issues with the application.  All registrations and renewals have been free to date but they are working now on reviewing the policies, looking at implementing multiple registrars and promoting .id. This will require significant changes to how the organisation currently operates.

After hearing from the local hosts, the topics moved to a security focus with Danny McPherson talking about DDOS attacks and how to mitigate against them, followed by Bill Manning covering the pros and cons of DNSSEC and DLV and Adrian Kinderis speaking about the number and diversity of name servers. (http://aptld.org/meeting/2007/02_Bali/dlv-at-ten.pdf; http://aptld.org/meeting/2007/02_Bali/ARI_How_Much_Is_Enough.pdf).

 There were brief presentations given by Siavash Shahshahani (.ir) about the APRALO (Asia Pacific Regional At-Large Organisation) and from Sharil Tarmizi, the GAC chair titled “ccTLDs and the GAC - Areas for Interaction between ccTLD's and their Governments”.

Keith Davidson outlined the issues facing a region such as the Asia Pacific when he delivered a presentation covering the decisions by ICANN regarding what ccTLD should be placed where (http://aptld.org/meeting/2007/02_Bali/Review_of_ICANN_Regions.pdf) in relation to the ICANN regions.  There are a number of ccTLD managers physically located in one region, for example Asia Pacific, but who are designated into another region, for example Europe, by virtue of being an overseas territory of another country.  Keith’s presentation raised some interesting issues that will be discussed further by APTLD.

The afternoon session saw a few different panel discussions with various APTLD members outlining their approach to:

§                                      Relationships between the ccTLD and their government

§                                      Dealing with spam and phishing

§                                      Enforcement of registration policies

With four or five ccTLD representatives on each panel, a variety of viewpoints and approaches were expressed and there was good discussion on each.  A .nz representative was on each of the three panels and were able to contribute to the discussions.

Internationalised Domain Names (IDN) are an ongoing issue being discussed in both the ccTLD and gTLD environments.  Tina Dam, the Director of IDN Programs for ICANN, gave an overview and update of the area.

Following the conclusion of the members meeting the AGM was held.  Peter Dengate Thrush was attending his last meeting as Chair and APTLD Board Member and his efforts were suitably acknowledged and he departed the role with the thanks and appreciation of all.

Keith was elected as Peter’s replacement to the Board and will serve as the .nz representative.  Shariya Haniz Zulkifli from .my was appointed the new Chair, with Jonathan Shea (.hk) the Vice Chair.

Other outcomes from the meeting will be available in the minutes when they are released.

More information on the meeting can be seen at:

http://aptld.org/meeting/2007/02_Bali/index.htm

http://aptld.org/meeting/2007/02_Bali/communique.htm