On Fri, 19 Jun 1998, Leni Mayo wrote:

> Rick Welykochy wrote:
> 
> > (*) *.au domains will go on forever ... they are THE sanctified
> >     TLD's in Australia
> 
> Like many others I have a gut feel that some domains are "official"
> while others aren't.  It might be interesting to elaborate on what
> this means.

One simple definition: "official domains" are accessible from the
seven or eight so-called ROOT servers. Someone with better memory
than I can contribute the complete list of those servers.
This is also a very workable definition, since most Internet
systems connected to the global Internet use the ROOT servers
as their starting point for locating all domain names in the
global system.

 
> Rick points out that no fees need to be paid to renew the domain.

Hmmm ... I don't recall pointing that out. In fact, most domain
names do require a renewal fee after one or two years.
In the case of the .COM/.NET/.ORG/etc the fee is US $70.00 for
a two year period. For several of the .AU domains (.COM.AU and
.NET.AU) the fee is AUD $125.00 for two years.

My point being:

If the owner of .AU.COM does NOT pay their fee, or their domain
name is cancelled by InterNIC, then the thousands ofd 3LD domains
piggy-backing on .AU.COM are simply SOL - they are instantly OFF THE NET!

Of course, the same does NOT apply to .COM.AU and .NET.AU, since they
are sanctioned (in the sense of approved, not the church sense as some
person indicated) by IANA and the ROOT name server system.


Regards
R Welykochy