On Sat, 7 Dec 1996, Peter Gerrand wrote:

> > I would appreciate an answer to the following suggestion of mine (and
> > subsequent words of support from Boz Cappie as below). I think it is the
> > fairest way to address the renewal situation - fairest for all concerned. I
> > have discussed this with others who also agree that the logical thing to do
> > with existing com.au registrations is to simply leave them alone until (any)
> > defined event which causes them to be re-registered, but to otherwise take
> > no action to change (or remove) existing com.au names prior to any
> > re-registration of same.
> 
> We have two strong motivations: technical and commercial.
> As the COM.AU DNA we need to validate and update the DNS as soon as
> possible, so we can carry out our job without making serious mistakes
> through relying on badly out-of-date and incomplete data in the DNS. 
> Currently AUNIC is both incomplete (in allocated DNs) and unreliable
> (for administrative and technical contacts). The fact that AUNIC only
> allows each administrative contact to belong to one organisation, when
> in reality, they can belong to several, means that we cannot properly
> test whether the specified administrative contact in applications is
> indeed the true admin contact for the organisation. We are also told by
> several ISPs that many of the administrative and technical contacts
> listed in AUNIC are out of date. As the COM.AU DNA, we need to obtain
> reliable, up-to-date information on all our customer admin contacts, 
> and we can best achieve this through a complete re-registration process. 

OK - the technical problem I can understand - *except* that the
current .com.au DNS system does seem to be functioning adequately from
a user perspective. This does not mean that there aren't misconfigured
DNSs out there - just that enough of it (most) works so the error
levels are acceptable (going by my DNS logs - certainly there are far
more errors appearing there from outside Australia than within).
 
> The commercial discipline of having to pay to renew DNs will sort out
> the "live" from the "dead" DNs, and cause the administrative and
> technical contacts to be updated in the process. We shall work with
> PISPs and other ISPs to validate their records during December-February
> and produce a reliable DNS. 

This is also understood - and sorting out the live from the dead is 'a
good thing'. But this can be done over a reasonable period - such as
the 12 months period proposed by Simon Hackett.

> Might I add that I do not believe it is practical to have competing DN
> Administrators working safely in the com.au domain until the current DNS
> is validated by this means.

With this I do have problems. Given the the DNS system within .com.au
seems to function adequately, please can you provide some technical
justification of this statement? I fail to see how two (or more)
competent, diligent DNAs would make the operation of hte current
system more problematic or impractical than a single one.

Without such justification, MelbourneIT's actions are too easily
interpreted as an attempt to tie up the .com.au domain commercially so
as to significantly reduce the viability of any competition to their
operations.

I would suggest MelbourneIT move rapidly to justify this statement in
technical, DNS operational terms to avoid misinterpretation of their
actions.

Robert Hart                             hartr§interweft.com.au
Voice: +61 (0)3 9735 3586		http://www.interweft.com.au/
InterWeft, 35 Summit Road, Lilydale, Victoria 3140, Australia
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