ICANN, VeriSign Will Consider Changes on .net Agreement
14th July, 2005
ICANN and VeriSign will consider changes to the new .net registry agreement in response to a mass protest by major domain name registrars, who said the deal represented a "breach of trust" between ICANN and the registrar community. In response to a joint protest by more than 30 registrars at a Luxembourg meeting, ICANN chairman Vint Cerf announced today that VeriSign and ICANN will re-examine a provision in the agreement that lifts restrictions on the price VeriSign can charge registrars for each .net domain they sell.
"In light of the comments and the concerns from the community, VeriSign is willing to discuss reworking the fee cap provision," wrote Tim Ruiz of Go Daddy in an update to registrars. With the announcement, ICANN and VeriSign have committed to further discussions, with no guarantee of changes at this time. But the reopening of negotiations was seen as a step forward by registrars, who were concerned that changes in the fee structure in the .net agreement could set a precedent for the renewal of the .com registry, also maintained by VeriSign. But the registrars' primary grievance was that the lifting of the price cap was negotiated privately, and never mentioned in published drafts of the agreement.
eNom Grabs 320,000 More .info Names
11th July, 2005
Domain registrar eNom has once again made a major landgrab of .info domains, registering 320,000 names in June, giving it the largest net gain in this month's Hosting Provider Switching Analysis with an increase of more than 287K hostnames.
There were several significant percentage gains in this month's analysis as well, including a large switching gain for Las Vegas hosting provider Powerpulse.cc/Colocation Gateway, which had more than 84K sites transfer from Rackspace. NR Software was also among the leaders for percentage gains with a net increase of 90.7K sites, driven by 133K new sites and a pickup of 2K hostnames from MCI.
| Gains by Selected Hosting Providers, June 05 to July 05 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hosting Company | June 05 | July 05 | Growth | Pct. Growth | Primary Region |
| PowerPulse.cc | 108,943 | 194,694 | 85,571 | 78.7% | Americas |
| NR Software | 174,870 | 293,451 | 118,581 | 67.8% | America |
| eNom | 1,250,639 | 1,538,439 | 287,800 | 23.0% | America |
ICANN: VeriSign Can Raise .net Prices in 2007
8th July, 2005
ICANN is lifting restrictions on VeriSign's pricing of .net domains after Jan. 1, 2007, a move that may signal ICANN's intent to get out of the business of regulating domain name pricing. ICANN has historically capped registry fees at either $6 or $4.25 per domain, depending on the top-level domain extension (TLD). The new contract reduces the current .net price cap from $6 to $4.25 through Dec. 31, 2006, but then lifts it altogether. The awarding of the .net registry to VeriSign has already prompted controversy and criticism from competitors.
VeriSign's Tom Galvin noted that the new contract (PDF) gives the company the flexibility to raise prices to invest in its infrastructure, but said VeriSign "will take a prudent approach to any adjustment in .net pricing." VeriSign must give six months' notice of any price change, providing an opportunity for existing domain name owners to lock in existing prices with a multi-year renewal.
Hosting companies have been slashing domain prices in a bid to acquire hosting customers, effectively commoditizing first-time domain registrations. The discounts on new domains have persisted even as resale prices for existing domain names have soared, a disconnect that has encouraged speculative buying of previously unregistered names.
Hosts Ban phpBB As Security Issues Persist
8th July, 2005
Some web hosts are banning the use of phpBB in the wake of persistent security problems for the popular open source web forum program. The move follows renewed attacks on phpBB after a coding error was found in the same file targeted by a December worm attack that defaced thousands of phpBB sites.
"It's been brought to our attention over recent weeks that some hosts are banning or dissuading the use of phpBB," said a message from the phpBB development team. "This is unfortunate for everyone and seems largely to be based on FUD (Ed. fear, uncertainty and doubt). While phpBB has and no doubt will continue to suffer from exploits (show me a piece of software that doesn't!) we have consistently addressed such issues very quickly."
Web hosts are less impressed. One host that has banned the software said phpBB had been its biggest security headache. "Since January, phpBB has been through at least 4, and maybe 5 revisions due to serious vulnerabilities, often found/reported wthin HOURS of a version release," HostPC said in its customer advisory.
UK News Sites Flooded After London Blasts
7th July, 2005
The web sites for the BBC and Reuters struggled to remain available early this morning amid heavy traffic from Internet users seeking the latest news about this morning's terror attacks on the London transit system. Performance for both sites has improved throughout the day. Multiple simultaneous explosions rocked London's subway system and a passenger bus during rush hour this morning, leaving more than 30 dead and hundreds injured. The blasts came as a meeting of G8 leaders convened in Scotland.
In the hours immediately following the attacks, the BBC web site limited the number of images on its home page, which reduces server load during periods of high traffic volume, as image files tend to be larger than HTML files. That helped the BBC site remain largely available, albeit with intermittent outages and slow response times. The Reuters web site showed better response time on our uptime charts, but in many cases that response was a system message stating that the server was too busy to respond. Within several hours, the Reuters site appeared to be operating normally.
Major US news sites were seeing no performance problems, and major UK corporate sites experienced only minor problems, with only scattered, brief outages among FTSE 100 companies.
Major Newspaper Sites Hobbled by Power Woes
6th July, 2005
A power outage at an Advance Internet hosting facility has hobbled the web sites for the company's chain of more than 30 newspapers, including many large metropolitan dailies. The Advance newspapers have switched to text-based sites to continue publishing, but are currently unable to display advertising, making the outage a potentially costly event.
Affected sites include NJ.com, Michigan Live, Cleveland.com, The Portland Oregonian and the online classifieds site BestLocalJobs.com and Best LocalAutos.com. One of the affected papers, The New Orleans Times-Picayune, is in the midst of covering the impact of Tropical Storm Cindy, which hit the New Orleans area yesterday and has left more than 240,000 local residents without power as well.