On 4/28/05, Michael ODonnell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Years ago I purchased a "ten-year" registration > for a domain and that arrangement has worked > as expected. Today I spoke with a different > outfit about registering another domain for > ten years and they said that ALL domains are > only ever registered for one year and that a > "ten-year" registration was really just some > registrar agreeing to automatically re-register > you on a yearly basis.
Well, first, it depends on the registry. Different registries have different rules. That is to say, the rules for .COM are different then the rules for .CN (China). Let me mention here that there is a difference between a registrar and a registry. A regisTRY maintains the DNS zone for a TLD. For example, Public Interest Registry is the regisTRY for the .ORG domain. Verisign Global Registry Services is the regisTRY for the .COM and .NET TLDs. Then there are registRARs. RegistRARs take registrations from Domain Holders and submit them to the regisTRY for a TLD. Network Delusions, GoDaddy, Register.com, and countless others are all registRARs. Now, for the "big three" gTLDs (.COM, .NET, and .ORG), I can quote ICANN's website: "Each registrar has the flexibility to offer initial and renewal registrations in one-year increments, provided that the maximum remaining unexpired term shall not exceed ten years." (http://www.icann.org/faq/#regtime) So your ten-year registration is legit. Anything longer then ten years may or may not be legit. For example, Network Delusions used to offer a "one-hundred year registration". What NSI did was take your money up front, register for the max period, and then renew it automatically for you as needed. It's perfectly legit for NSI to make an agreement with you to do that, even if the registry and WHOIS doesn't reflect that agreement. Now, the registrars have to submit to submit an anual fee to the registry for each domain they register for you. For example, if you register a .COM domain with GoDaddy, then GoDaddy has to send $6 every year to VGRS for that domain name. That may be what the registrar you were talking to was talking about. (Although I suspect your own analysis is the correct one.) (Note that my information is somewhat out-of-date. For example, I know VeriSlime was talking about reorganizing VGRS, NSI, and friends, and may have done so. But while the names may have changed, the rules are still the same, AFAIK.) _______________________________________________ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
