As many of us know, the massive Australian Domain Name Registry database will switch over on June 30.
That’s only two weeks from now!
By all reports, this is the
BIGGEST EVER domain name migration to a new Registry Operator in history.
Afilias were responsible for migrating the .ORG TLD database back in 2002. At that time there were just over 2 million domain names they had to move.
On June 3o, Afilias are going to migrate 3.1 million Australian domain names.
There’s no denying that’s a massive task!
For the last few months, according to
Afilias’ blog, they have been performing the following actions:
April-May-June 2018: New DNS “nodes” are being installed all over Australia. We’ll be lighting up servers in Brisbane, Adelaide, Hobart, Perth, Darwin and other great Australian cities. These local servers will provide faster access to websites, improving the internet experience for all Australians, not just the folks in the big cities.
This is the first time Perth, Adelaide and Darwin have had “local” nodes, so you’d think we’d see some good speed advantages in these areas?
Bearing all that in mind, a lot of people are starting to ask,
how smoothly and quickly is this all going to go?
Afilias have officially stated that Australian internet users won’t notice a thing, and it will appear as a
non-event to everyone:
June 30, 2018: While this is the big “transition day,” internet users in Australia won’t notice a thing. Afilias has managed many such transitions, so no one needs to worry about whether sites will still work—this will be a non-event.
Second, auDA again hosted another very successful meeting with our Australian registrar partners last week. Afilias provided a detailed technical update and answered all the various questions that came up about the progress of the transition. Australian registrars are quite sophisticated and dedicated to protecting their customers, and Afilias was recognized for its openness and collaborative spirit as we upgrade the .au technology together.
Will things be business-as-usual on July 1st?
What’s going to happen to the daily drops during this time?
From July 1st, will we be able to register dropped-domains for a one year period? For a five-year period?
You can read Afilias’ latest blog post about this “
historic transition of .AU“.
Many registrars are unhappy with the way the transition is being managed. Gag order in place so we can’t speak about the problems that lie in wait. Registrants should be prepared for shocks and disruption.
What “gag order” are you talking about?
With just 2 weeks to go, I am extremely nervous. Afilias has published a test environment that allows registrars to test there software. It is broken and does not comply with their own published schema. Anything involving .au extensions and DNSSEC does not seem to work.
Afilias will be taking down the entire server and then be migrating all the domain names and associated metadata across and then bringing all the servers back up. Ready for all the registrars to connect. And in never-never land, this will all work smoothly, but in the real world, these migrations never go smoothly.
What is the rollback plan? How does that deal with synchronisation issues?
So how could they make the transition go smoother?
No Big Bang! Have both Ausregistry and Afilias systems running at the same time. With data synchronisation in the back end. This would allow registrars to transition smoothly and not all at once.
So Load risk could be handled.
Server Bug fixes – It would allow for Afilias to fix bugs in the server, and all the registrars would have to do is fail back to Ausregistry.
Registrar bug fixes are easier as there is a failover option
What is the rush?
Many things have not happened.
Develop some risk management
Develop some rollback strategies
Publish a test implementation of a client that exercises the EPP servers as per the specification. Don’t leave it for the registrars to find the errors.
I hope that I am wrong and that everything goes smoothly. But my pessimistic personality is very concerned.
Its like Y2K all over Again.
Haha- Scott. I was thinking the same thing when I was writing the article. Perhaps planes are going to fall out of the sky on July 1?!
As far as we know, .au holder should not notice any change.
As registrars however we do and need to make a few changes to way things work, which of course was expected. We have been told that 1-5 year registrations terms will be available from Jul 1 onwards and we have started testing this already to be ready in time.
Yes there are known issues around policy inconsistencies, but to be fair most of the policies are dated and probably should not be applicable anyway. They still have time to address anything that is needed. So as registrars, we want things to go smoothly, we want stability and we want things to work like they did, so that we do not have interuptions to our business.
Cheers
David
It’s going to be very interesting.
I’d love to hear from anyone who knows if the drops are still going to work on July 1? Or will they be turned off for a few days? A few weeks?
And if they are turned off for a day or two…. the moment they are turned back on, is it going to become a MEGA DROP all in one day, with a mass-collation of all the names that dropped in the meantime?
If Afilias has got it’s act together you would expect that the names would be purged on a normal daily basis.
As to if the drop catchers have their systems fully functional only time will tell.
New members join auDA…
“While the new auDA members will not be eligible to vote at the July (special general) meeting they will be entitled to vote at the auDA annual general meeting later in the year, arguably making any decisions made next month potentially redundant.”
http://theluckygeneral.biz/2018/06/18/auda-membership-grows-as-reform-process-takes-shape/