19 October, 2010

IDN registrations launched

Today, I am writing about milestone reached by Ukrainian domain registry, Hostmaster Ltd.
Over last few months, we have achieved several things which, in itself, can signify a certain level of development. First, we have reached ten thousand of domains under .UA, all registered by holders of trademarks, according to effective domain policy. Second, there is now over a thousand domains under GOV.UA - a sign of improvement in development of online governmental presence. Hopefully, both of these thresholds would be small in just few years.

Third, on a technical frontier, we added IPv6 support to our anycast DNS cluster, with three of six locations enabled and more to come. There is just one DNS server remaining to add IPv6, which is scheduled to be upgraded this quarter to newer software release and hardware platform. Fourth, we added IPv6 to our Whois service. I am not sure if anybody does it yet, but we are discussing using any cast technology for Whois - something I am not aware of, myself.

Last, but not least, we have launched IDN support for second-level domains COM.UA and KIEV.UA, thus starting adoption of technology that is becoming popular recently, with support from ICANN, participating ccTLDs, and other parties. Of existing 180+ registrars, twenty signed updated agreement to be ready on the day of launch, October 19th (this is today).

The new agreement, which is an expanded version of existing one, adopted in 2004, was developed over course of three months after multiple face-by-face meetings and online discussions, as well as phone calls and even paper letter exchanges. About seven registrars actively participated in meetings, often bringing their own lawyers, to ensure that intellectual property rights would be protected.

What first seemed to be just "flip the switch for xn-- prefix" thing turned out to be a complex ordeal. From anti-phishing protection (stemming from similarities between Cyrillic and Latin scripts), to sunrise and land rush period, to extensive frameworks of warnings from registry about procedural violations (with carefully selected timelines for correction) and clear conditions under which registrar can block infringing domain name registration directly, our new agreement became the foundation on which we can develop our relationship with market participants for years to come.

We have multiple issues to tackle - migration to standards-based EPP protocol, adoption of new conflict resolution rules, updating rules for domain transfer and owner change - but they all can be resolved with participation of multiple parties that, together, form a domain registration ecosystem that ultimately benefits end users - registrants.

It thus a milestone of people-driven process of multistakeholder negotiation, not documents or computer systems, that I am talking about. Thank you everybody!

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