Registry Failover Planning Should include Registrar Provisioning

by jothan | Jun 21, 2007 | ICANN, NewTLDs, Policy

I commented on a public document.   Let me be more specific…

Recently, there has been some talk over what a registry failover would need to look like, in the event that a new registry provider would need to be designated.

As new Top Level Domains (TLD) are introduced, many of them include failover testing or have described their disaster recovery plans, but these typically are focused upon natural disasters or acts of god, etc.

It is vital infrastructure, to be sure. As vital as the number of registrants or users that utilize the TLD, at least.

I spent some time reviewing the current registry failover plan, and noticed that it was very well written and prepared. I commend ICANN staff for their very thorough and hard work.

The place where I commented about perhaps adding some specificity is in trying to ensure that registrars can quickly unplug and re-plug their connections (and I am super-oversimplifying the actual process) to minimize registrant impacts for domains under management.

I’d also note that the likely driver of this document was not natural disaster or act of god, but rather the potential financial failure of the publicly-traded parent company to the registry.

While the circumstances that were likely driving the urgency of this planning have been relieved in the near term, this is an important proactive measure to ensure that effects to the namespace and users are minimized to the fullest extent, and then all of that security and stability is present in transition.