Comments to Draft .NET RFP

["Adrian Kinderis" <adrian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Title: Comments to Draft .NET RFP

Dear ICANN,

It appears from review of the Draft .NET RFP that the planned date for announcement of the successor registry operator is due after the ICANN Board Meeting in March 2005. The registry agreement between ICANN and VeriSign will expire on the 30^th of June 2005. Whilst it is not explicitly stated within the RFP, from my interpretation of the document, the .NET registry must be in a “go live” status at this time.

 

This leaves approximately three months in order for the successful operator to have built, tested, deployed and transitioned the .NET registry, including such things as an OT&E environment at least one month before the “go live” date and the technical accreditation of all registrars. This also implies that any “back out” plan for the transition could not rely on the incumbent to continue registry services.

Should this be the case it would be prohibitive for our, and many other organisations to commit to these timelines without severely compromising the stability and integrity of a  namespace that is arguably one of the most critical to the operation of the internet with the majority of hosts providing network services being provisioned in .NET.

These timelines seem to unfairly benefit a select few whom have existing registrar relationships and similar deployed technology (i.e. RRP).

This could also place any organisation responding to the RFP into a possible litigious situation whereby they could not possibly meet the deadlines. In this case, the successful entity has the choice of either rushing the task and finishing on time jeopardising the stability and integrity of the registry or “pushing” out the timelines in which case they would be defaulting on their commitment in providing a conforming tender. Should this be allowed, it would be unfair to those that chose not to submit based on timelines alone.

Can you please confirm firstly that my assumptions regarding timelines are correct, and secondly that an applicant must conform to these strict parameters and no variance of these terms will be accepted?

Kind Regards,

Adrian Kinderis
Managing Director
AusRegistry Pty Ltd
Level 6, 10 Queens Road
Melbourne. Victoria Australia. 3004

Ph:  +61 3 9866 3710
Fax: +61 3 9866 1970
Email: adriank@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Web:  www.ausregistry.com.au