Nominet Registrar Meeting 5 3 2014

[Stephen]

The Nominet registrar meeting was held in London as a full day event on 5th March.

A well attended, well organised, well managed and professional event.

The Nominet staff, managers and directors were all upbeat and exciting by the challenges ahead with .uk, .wales and the new security road map products.

Nominet will announce shortly a range of new Registrar products, which Nominet hopes will keep .uk domains ahead of the pack in terms of security and trust. It has been strange that although the Security road map was announced in June 2013, nothing has been published, yet nominet have been working very hard behind the scenes (almost as a commercial company would) in producing a wide range of services and products.

.wales announced the .dot marketing campaign but would not be drawn on the pricing or their target number but seem to have an extensive and perhaps expensive campaign planned.

.uk marketing plan in my opinion was very weak and the target market for .uk is going to be "digital natives"?

.uk Nominet are going to do an email to all those that are entitled to the .uk but it will take place mid July, over 4 weeks after they are entitled to register.
The logic for this was the registrars would do the job of communicating to their .co.uk clients.

It was said Nominet have learnt the lessons on policy and are adapting but I'm not sure what form the new policy creation is going to take.

There were interesting and thought provoking speakers and no expense was spared to make the day a success.

There were a lot of stats on the new gTLD's take up, as open information on new 1,000+ gTLD's is required but Nominet would not be drawn whether they would be making zone file or numbers of new registrations on .uk available as under the current Nominet policy it could be months before anybody outside Nominet knows what is going on after 10th June.

Several domainers / Acorn members were present at the event.

 

[diablo]

Thanks for the summary Stephen - very valuable.

 

[AssetDomains]

Thanks for the update Stephen I managed to watch the last 3 parts of the morning session on the webcast. The guy from GCHQ was interesting enjoyed the panel debate as well.
Edwin your question on what's going to happen to customers when some of these newtlds go bust was excellent. They rather skirted round the answer was the icann lady any more forthcoming later on.

 

[Edwin]

Edwin your question on what's going to happen to customers when some of these newtlds go bust was excellent. They rather skirted round the answer was the icann lady any more forthcoming later on.

The speaker from ICANN came up to me and offered to get me more information, but Twitter had already obliged by pointing me at http://www.nominet.org.uk/news/latest/nominet-selected-icann-emergency-back-end-registry-operator and with a bit of Googling I found that there's a contingency for the Emergency Back-End Registry Operators (EBERO) to step into the breach and run registries if need be, so I told her I'd already found an answer.

Note that none of the above process addresses the commercial damage of registry failures i.e. what the impact on public perception/trust would be, but at least existing registrants will see their registrations safeguarded.

 

[Whois-Search]

Hmmm did we attend the same conference Stephen?

The whole day was carefully orchestrated to avoid a debate regarding .uk or the registrar agreement which was due the very next day - in fact half the day was spent talking about unrelated issues! Questions were only allowed in private and when pushed in the workshops the unwillingness to debate was clear.

For those that have been involved in Nominet for 10 years or more yesterday was the first time I've seen such a commercial shift in the aims and goals of Nominet. Products like Cyber Assist will mean Nominet itself (not through registrars) will be selling products and services directly as a brand. Running the new GTLD emergency back end provider service will mean Nominet will hover up a few hundred new gTLDs to run etc

Not only that there is a massive focus being put on large registrars and the benefits they will receive for being accredited. Research and the technical implementation of the new Sentential dashboard is first class - however how would you like to face sanctions if your score drops below a certain level?

I also note this on the bottom of the latest non-announnce:

The Key Partner Meeting follows next week (12 March) with an agenda that follows the topics covered in the afternoon sessions of the .uk Registrar Conference.

That is the first time I've seen such an announcement and I'd be interested to know if the incumbent non-executive directors will be attending that meeting?

Even the co-funding programme for .wales and .cymru is focused on those with deep pockets:

Option 1 - £1000 matched by the registrar
Option 2 - £10,000 to £50,000 matched by the registrar

Therefore...

Though most people at the moment a relieved by the five year coma on .uk - please don't be blinded by the real underlying commercial interests that are at play here.

There was even a hint that the membership structure maybe changed at the start of the meeting and I've also heard a rumor since that the Nominet forum itself is about to be "made better".

 

[Edwin]

To add to Stephen's summary, there will be around a dozen security tools unveiled in the next 6-12 months (the plan is to have them all live by the end of 2014 but there might be a little slippage) including tools to lock down high value domains so that no changes of any kind can be made to them, tools to diagnose "problem" domains on a tag (domains being used for spam, botnets, hosting malware, etc.) and a wide range of other things.

NOTE: Many/most of the above will not be free, but will be value-added services to supplement existing security protocols and to help make the UK namespace the most trusted in the world (Nominet's stated goal).

Some of it looked pretty impressive, other stuff sounded a bit fluffy, but overall a significant package of security improvements looks to be on its way for those willing/able to pay for them.

 

[Edwin]

I agree with Stephen that the programme of the day itself was executed very well, and with Andrew that there was no disguising the naked commercialism of many of the initiatives Nominet presented.

My own interpretation was that if you look down the road 5-10 years, Nominet are positioning themselves as a major player in the UK internet security space (with global ambitions) with domains becoming to a greater or lesser extent both cash cow and sideshow as the range of services they offer grows and diversifies.

That's not to suggest they can't make a good fist of running the UK namespace - I have no reason to suspect that the service they provide will get any worse in that respect - only that it will become a less and less key component in their overall portfolio of services (albeit the one that gets them "at the table" in high level Government meetings and the like)

 

[Edwin]

Even the co-funding programme for .wales and .cymru is focused on those with deep pockets:

Option 1 - £1000 matched by the registrar
Option 2 - £10,000 to £50,000 matched by the registrar

Not entirely sure, but I think the co-marketing program was meant for .uk not .wales?

 

[Whois-Search]

Not entirely sure, but I think the co-marketing program was meant for .uk not .wales?

No it was .wales .cymru and only for accredited channel partners

 

[Edwin]

No it was .wales .cymru and only for accredited channel partners

Ok, thanks for the clarification.

 

[AssetDomains]

The speaker from ICANN came up to me and offered to get me more information, but Twitter had already obliged by pointing me at http://www.nominet.org.uk/news/latest/nominet-selected-icann-emergency-back-end-registry-operator and with a bit of Googling I found that there's a contingency for the Emergency Back-End Registry Operators (EBERO) to step into the breach and run registries if need be, so I told her I'd already found an answer.

Note that none of the above process addresses the commercial damage of registry failures i.e. what the impact on public perception/trust would be, but at least existing registrants will see their registrations safeguarded.

Its good to see that end users wont end up being shafted.
It will be interesting to see what happens when it comes to round two in terms of who will be able to set these up.
I'd imagine a fair percentage of the commercial ones will fail before then.

I do think some are here to stay I can see the international ones being very popular.
With the backing of local governments geos of major cities such as .London .paris are probably here to stay as well.

 

[Stephen]

Yes we were

Hmmm did we attend the same conference Stephen?

The whole day was carefully orchestrated to avoid a debate regarding .uk or the registrar agreement which was due the very next day - in fact half the day was spent talking about unrelated issues! Questions were only allowed in private and when pushed in the workshops the unwillingness to debate was clear.

For those that have been involved in Nominet for 10 years or more yesterday was the first time I've seen such a commercial shift in the aims and goals of Nominet. ......

I believe we did!

Agree about the format of the meeting and although "feedback" was mentioned as an objective of the meeting it was done more on 1 to 1 way, rather than under the publicity of the webcast.

Also agree there was no debate on any issues, not just the things that are going to happen like the .uk launch , the .wales launch, the new registrar agreement
but also the things Nominet are pushing ahead which has had no membership debate
or consultation process such as the commercialization of UK security and its new road security map and moving into .com security
and what about a cheap UK SSL certificate to help SME's?.

Nominet stated to be in one of the sessions about security, that there was no need for feedback on the way forward they had already received security feedback during the .uk consultation.
I personally think they should have debate on the issue and maybe not a formal consultation but some mechanism were interested parties can contribute to the thinking and development.
This should be done, when you consider how wide Nominet security proposal in .uk version 1 was from the consensus view, which shows they can go way off track!

A lot of emphasis on the large registrars, but it was a registrar conference.

There may be some scope under the direction Nominet is going to see if certain changes can be made to improve the benefits of having "a self managed TAG" (any ideas!) as all Nominet seems to mention and focus on is the improving conditions for the large approved registrars.

 

[Skinner]

I'm just setting up an SSL for facebook app hosting a Comodo SSL for small sites is £5 a yr and big sites £10 a year and for wildcard subdomains £50 that isn't that expensive is it ?

The dedicated IP required at £15, so looking at less than £10 a month including hosting for SSL Dedi IP Hosting for a small business ?

and what about a cheap UK SSL certificate to help SME's?.

The registrar agreement bothers me, I have been planning on making the move to get my clients domains on my tag, but the limited different names allowed will be a problem which will force me to move away from self managed in time.

 

[monaghan]

The registrar agreement bothers me, I have been planning on making the move to get my clients domains on my tag, but the limited different names allowed will be a problem which will force me to move away from self managed in time.

This is the concern I have (and raised with Nominet, but got the usual brush off response). The big registrars get all the goodies, the portfolio holders get free transfers and those stuck in the middle get none of the benefits that the others get

 

[Skinner]

There is a "special case" exception if I understand it properly.

Since I wouldn't be offering public registrations, more managing existing names, I'm hoping I can wangle a special case exception. Maybe worth a try on your side too, I'm waiting for it to come into force before I try

 

[AssetDomains]

This is the concern I have (and raised with Nominet, but got the usual brush off response). The big registrars get all the goodies, the portfolio holders get free transfers and those stuck in the middle get none of the benefits that the others get

Its seems stupid that the middle tier don't get free transfers but as you can have more than one tag it not to much of a problem.

Have a standard channel partner TAG for customer domains and a separate selfmanged TAG which you can tag change domains onto for the free transfers as and when needed. Its an extra hoop to jump through but will only take a second.

 

[Stephen]

SSL costs

I'm just setting up an SSL for facebook app hosting a Comodo SSL for small sites is £5 a yr and big sites £10 a year and for wildcard subdomains £50 that isn't that expensive is it ?

The dedicated IP required at £15, so looking at less than £10 a month including hosting for SSL Dedi IP Hosting for a small business ?
.

Thanks on some of my e-commerce websites I also have cheap SSL certificates but on some of my businesses are required to have heavier duty SSL certificates and cost £300 p.a. each due to trade body requirements.
Still not a fortune but still a barrier to e-commerce in the UK, when you have several separate sites.

The point I was trying to make; security as a standard alone issue was not debated or discussed on what direction Nominet should go in,
Nominet have decided their path internally.

 

[AssetDomains]

Nominet have thought of that one. From the new registrar agreement:

Thanks I'll ask for clarification on that one when they call as it does seem to put a stop to my idea.

I'm hoping they will turn a blind eye to domains actually registered to me of which 99% on my tags are.

I'm thinking that clause what put in to stop me offering a lower level of service by keeping other peoples names on a self managed TAG.
I can understand if I was tag changing customers names names there might be an issue.

As it stands if as a normal end user I held domains with big company 1 who decided to put a charge in for domain transfers. Nominet would have no issue with me tag changing them to big company 2 who didn't charge.

So shouldn't be any different for my own domains just because I happen to be registrar