June 30th changes?

[Edwin]

Does anyone have a feel for what tomorrow's changes to the DAC will mean in terms of drop catching? There was a massive thread about this a little while back, but so much of that thread was about the will-it-won't-it happen aspect... and now according to Nominet's site it's 100% going to happen.
Planned Changes

 

[retired_member6]

Is this the one where they were going to keep the requests the same for all but give additional to those with more names so they'd be able to catch better?

 

[monaghan]

My gut feel is that the premium names will still be caught by those with the best / fastest setups as use of the real time DAC will continue to be the only way to catch these, but the big change will be in the middle of the road names where the registrars with the large numbers of names will be able to simply "hoover up" with their delayed DAC quota. Given a recent thread about a registrar redirecting names to parking pages then they will even have the ability to "taste" the names in order to prioritise which ones to catch for themselves.

 

[retired_member12]

I would have thought Nominet would make sure the door is firmly shut on 'tasting', yes?

 

[dtm]

Nominet did not reply regarding moving the nameservers to domcollect on 'expiration' just to note.

Just got this email on nom-announce:

On Tuesday 30 June 2009 at 12:00pm we will be implementing the previously
announced changes to the Domain Availability Checker.

The current DAC service will be replaced with two new DAC services; the
Real Time DAC and the Time Delay DAC. Full details about these two new
services are available on our web site.
Domain Availability Checker

Connection to these new DAC services can be made on dac.nic.uk. Port 3043
should be used for the Real Time DAC and port 2043 should be used for the
Time Delay service. Please ensure that you use the server address
dac.nic.uk as a previous announcement quoted an incorrect address.

We also have a DAC testbed that can be used for testing your DAC
connection and scripts. Details of the testbed service are available on
our web site.
DAC testbed

The new services will go live at 12:00pm on Tuesday 30 June. We will shut
down and disconnect users from the old service at 12:30. We therefore
recommend that you disconnect and re-connect to the new services between
12:00 and 12:30. Full details of the deployment of the new services are
given in the planned changes section of our web site.
Planned Changes

If you have any questions about any of this information please contact our
Member and Registrar Services team on [email protected] or by calling
01865 332233.

 

[Paullas]

coming soon will be 3 dacs

dac 1 for live
dac 2 is time delayed
dac 3 is for the secondary market domain catchers

 

[Paullas]

also all the surplus money nominet have will i be able to claim for my software to be re written as when i subscribed to use the dac they didnt say or mention anything else coming out.

 

[Paullas]

can anyone show me or point me to where and why nominet have come to the desicion on the dac changes. Have they give a reason in writing why the changes are needed and have been set in place when it was ( or in my view ) clear the they where not needed.

 

[dtm]

can anyone show me or point me to where and why nominet have come to the desicion on the dac changes. Have they give a reason in writing why the changes are needed and have been set in place when it was ( or in my view ) clear the they where not needed.

To improve performance obviously

 

[Paullas]

well how can it improve performance when nominets website says:

They run on secondary copies of the register that are updated by an immediate replication process.

i thought the whois2 was for registras?

 

[dtm]

well how can it improve performance when nominets website says:

They run on secondary copies of the register that are updated by an immediate replication process.

i thought the whois2 was for registras?

That was a joke, It won't improve performance and there was never an issue of performance.

I think Nominet's reasoning behind it is that even though that a member of the public can go check the availability of domain on a registrars site through whois2 if they then decide to buy the domain instead of relying on whois2 the registrar would do a quick poll on the DAC to check before EPPing it be registered, hence the use of the delayed-DAC possibly. That's the only feasible reasoning behind it I can see.

I think the main issue behind all this is Nominet is supposed to be governed by it's members and us members have no idea why or seem to have any input into this!

 

[retired_member21]

Does anyone know if I can test a DAC system without becoming a member. (e.g. run in test mode only) and then join once I've got it completed?

Because I'm a pikey

 

[dtm]

Does anyone know if I can test a DAC system without becoming a member. (e.g. run in test mode only) and then join once I've got it completed?

You can use that testbed in the above message but all it seems to return is that every domain is available upon playing with it

 

[retired_member21]

Great news, sod's law I'll start something then 6m down the line get it finished wasting 6m of expenses (sounds about right)

 

[Paullas]

i know it was a joke btw....

so there is no point in members renewing the membership fees because you can just use a registrar

 

[essexboy]

So we know we can continue using the real time dac for catching, but what about creating your droplists?

 

[monaghan]

So we know we can continue using the real time dac for catching, but what about creating your droplists?

Subject to the new T&C's you can use this Instructions for use

The issue I see is that the time delay DAC doesn't give you your quota and there's nothing in the on-line service account to show the quota leaving the only way to establish this is to pull the Nominet invoices for the last year subtracting transfers out, adding transfers in and manually running their calculation - doable but pointless when they must already be doing it internally. Nom support suggested the functionality would be added, but nothing has been announced yet

 

[Edwin]

The issue I see is that the time delay DAC doesn't give you your quota and there's nothing in the on-line service account to show the quota leaving the only way to establish this is to pull the Nominet invoices for the last year subtracting transfers out, adding transfers in and manually running their calculation - doable but pointless when they must already be doing it internally. Nom support suggested the functionality would be added, but nothing has been announced yet

I suppose the alternative is to sacrifice a day's worth of catches, and run the script until the quota is used up, and count every iteration - that should give a very precise estimate of your quota so long as Nominet's count is correct.

 

[monaghan]

I suppose the alternative is to sacrifice a day's worth of catches, and run the script until the quota is used up, and count every iteration - that should give a very precise estimate of your quota so long as Nominet's count is correct.

Or simply raise a support request against Nominet to get them to tell you your quota, if enough do so then they might get round to adding it to the interface.

 

[monaghan]

I've just had a reply from Nominet support with my quota and ...

As mentioned previously we are happy to provide this information each month until the DAC command is implemented, however the Time Delay DAC's limit command will be introduced shortly and full documentation for this command will be provided at this time.