By Nick Patience
Internet domain name registry and registrar, Network Solutions Inc has completed the back-end work to separate out its registry function in time for the introduction of competition in the domain name registrar market on April 26. The web site (www.nsiregistry.com), which will detail the various requirements registrars have to meet and feature various documents pertaining to their operation is not up and running yet, but the Herndon, Virginia company says it will be before April 26.
The systems will enable multiple registrars – five in the two- month test period until late June, but potentially thousands of companies eventually – to register names in the .com, .net and .org name spaces that NSI controls and eventually additional top- level names that are likely to be added next year. Under its agreement with the Department of Commerce, NSI must erect barriers, both technical and financial between its own registry and registrar businesses. Its contract to be the exclusive registry expires on September 30, 2000.
This move fits with the company’s protestations recently that the old InterNic web site was not really a registry and therefore users should not have been so concerned by NSI’s redirection last month of the InterNic to its own networksolutions.com site, which caused uproar in the internet community. The company can thus argue that the forthcoming nsiregistry.com site is the true registry site. But – and it’s a big but – the company tells us that it is only planning to offer limited whois services at nsiregistry.com, which is the way users and registrars look up names to see of they are available. The full services will only be available at networksolutions.com.
The overhaul late last week caused disruption for anyone trying to register names on April 2 and 3, but the company says it is all up and running now and all the backlogs have been cleared. The company has also reinstated the date that registration records were first created on the whois database, which is useful information to competitive registrars and users that want particular names that may not be renewed.
