From: Fred Accary Sent: Friday, 5 October 2001 1:45 PM To: jo.lim@auda.org.au Subject: Comments on Registry Technical Specification Jo My comments re the registry technical specification for au I have limited my comments to what I believe to be the two main areas the RAP and the Registry Infrastructure and Performance criteria 1.0 Registry Access Protocol I believe AUDA should adopt EPP as the registry access protocol. EPP is fast becoming the industry standard. It has already been implemented by the .info registry and .biz will go live with EPP very soon. There are a number of free toolkits available, which make it very easy for a registrar to integrate with the registry. EPP has had a tremendous amount of thought put into it, and will continue to have in the future as it evolves. The resources to design and further enhance and maintain IRRP in the future will never match those of EPP Adopting EPP will eliminate a number of other problems ( some were discussed during the meeting eg what the address format should be ) I believe adopting EPP will speed the process of introducing competition ( data and protocol problems have already been solved by EPP ) and will be more beneficial for au in the future. 2.0 Registry Infrastructure and Performance The registry technical specification specifies a very "robust" infrastructure and very high performance targets to be achieved by the registry. These targets are very similar to those the the gTLD registry must achieve. The concerns I have are: - the au market is very small compared to the gTLD market. Therefore in order to support the registry operation at approximately the same level as the gTLD market, the price of an au domain must be significantly higher. - such high infrastructure and performance criteria will make it very hard for a small to medium sized organization to bid for the registry. The larger players already have infrastructure in place and could "piggy back" the au service on top of this, thus minimizing their costs. If you or anyone else would like to contact me to discuss this information further, please feel free to do so, either by email or phone ( 0417 554 114 ) Thanks Fred