Sophisticated registry services by CORE++

The registry service of CORE++ brings a lot of benefits, especially - but not only - to the registrars. Many of these benefits arise from CORE++'s valuable and practical extensions to EPP. These additional features are a result of the extensive experiences the members of CORE++ have made with EPP as registrars themselves, and many other registrars will highly appreciate these improvements. However, all of these extensions are fully optional (i.e. no registrar is forced to implement and use them).

In addition to that, CORE++'s registry services focus on security and stability. We do not only support upcoming standards like DNSSEC but also provide unique services that complement and extend those security features.

The following is a list of the most important services and advantages that the operation of the .net registry by CORE++ offers to registrars, resellers, registrants, and the global Internet community in general:

Domain Protection Service

As the successor .net registry operator, CORE++ will provide a new service that adds additional protection against unintended, accidental or fraudulent changes to domain names. In a nutshell, the service will enable the registrant (i.e. the domain owner) to ensure that certain operations on his domains are only executed by the registry if his explicit consent was received. The (optional) feature thus adds security to the usual registrant-reseller-registrar-registry chain, without questioning established registration business models. The service also facilitates DNSSEC usage (see below). The Domain Protection Service will be available in Q1/2006.

Secondary Market

Popular domain names are of considerable value. As a consequence, some registrars have specialized in trying to get such domains by continuous, high-frequency checking of the availability of expiring names. In some cases, there have been as much as 20 million requests aiming at a single, expiring domain name. This so-called "hammering" has become quite a problem, because it forces registry operators to improve their network and CPU resources in order to cope with the resulting load. CORE++ will come up with a sophisticated "auction" model that will provide all .net registrars with a fair chance to bid for such domains, eliminating the need for hammering. The introduction of the Secondary Market model will take place in Q4/2005.

Additional Accounting Data

Due to the move from fixed to flexible pricing models, promotions, various grace periods that may or may not apply, it becomes increasingly difficult to estimate the actual costs of a registration. While these costs may appear later in accounting reports, the registrar is unable to determine this at the time of the command submission. CORE++ offers an extension that provides accounting data in each response and poll notification. This contains the debit or credit the operation caused, as well as the total, accumulated cost of the domain.

Improved Transaction Management

EPP 1.0 is missing methods that allow the registrar to determine the outcome of a command, in case of a communication interruption during an ongoing transaction. With CORE++'s registry services, for the first time, registrars are able to easily decide whether it is necessary to resubmit the interrupted command or not.

Flexibility for registrars concerning the thin/thick registry model

.net is currently using a "thin registry" model, which means that registrars do not provide contact information (i.e. concerning the identity of a domain's registrant) to the registry. When .org moved from VeriSign to PIR, PIR introduced the "thick" model which forced .org registrars to submit all the contact information to PIR. In contrast, CORE++ will not obligate .net registrars to switch to the thick registry model. Instead, registrars will be able to choose (on a per-domain basis) whether they want to submit contact information to the registry or not. It is known that some registrars don't like to give away information about their customers, and these registrars will appreciate to be able to stick with the thin model. Other registrars will quickly adopt the thick model for all their domains, because this frees them from having to operate their own Whois server (which is required for registrars using the "thin" model).

Simplified (auto-)renewal process via EPP Poll Messages

Currently, in order to determine whether a domain has been renewed, or whether it is eligible to the renewal grace period, registrars either have to perform cumbersome and inaccurate date calculations, or have to use out-of-band sources, such as autorenew reports that may not be available in time. CORE++ provides additional poll notifications after the renewal and after the end of the grace period to simplify the handling of the renewal process and to extend the completeness of the EPP protocol.

Historical data of domains, hosts and contacts

The CORE++ registry solution allows for the storage of all historical data for domain, host and contact (thick registry) objects. Thus, it is possible to make available not only the actual status of a domain and related information, but also historical data.

Continued support of RRP for smooth migration

CORE++, as successor operator for the .net registry, will continue to support the registry-registrar protocol used by the current operator for at least one, full year. This will give all registrars enough time to smoothly migrate from RRP to EPP. Please take into account, however, that the Auction Model described above is only possible with EPP. Thus only those registrars supporting EPP will be able to participate in the Auction Model.

DNSSEC support

As the name indicates, DNSSEC (DNS Security Extensions) is a set of extensions to DNS. It was designed to protect the Internet from certain attacks by providing origin authentication of DNS data, data integrity, and authenticated denial of existence. The DNSSEC standard will be implemented within half a year after its finalization (DNSSEC-bis standard). The Domain Protection Service, described above, provides additional benefit for the DNSSEC implementation.

IPv6 support

IPv6 is short for "Internet Protocol Version 6", which was designed by the IETF to eventually replace the current version (IPv4). It provides a substantially larger address space and further improvements regarding security, mobility, quality of service, scalability of the network architecture and routing. The .net registry, as proposed by CORE++, will fully support IPv6, both as a connection protocol to the physical name servers, and on the DNS protocol level.

IRIS Support

IRIS (Internet Registry Information Service) is a protocol that is intended to replace the Whois protocol, which has a number of drawbacks. The proposed IRIS protocol will be supported by a testbed implementation. A full implementation will follow shortly after the protocol has matured to a RFC standard.

24/7 support in 8 different languages

Unlike many other registries, CORE++ offers support not only in English, but also in several, other languages. There are three different support centers all over the world that provide support 24/7 and which you can contact in the following languages: Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish.

Price reductions

CORE++ will significantly reduce the prices not only for new registrations and renewals, but also for undeleting .net domains during the redemption grace period. In addition to that, CORE++ will also bear the 75-cent domain fee. Although the registrars are the ones to determine the final prices, we expect the end customers to be able to benefit from these reductions of prices, too.