|
CircleID is a community hub for the Internet Infrastructure |
Learn More Login | Sign Up | About CircleID |
Home / blogsNominet Position Paper on Front Running
Nov 28, 2007 10:13 AM PST
| Comments: 1
 Nominet has published a very detailed and comprehensive position paper on “front running“. Although the paper is a mere 5 pages long it covers all the areas that the topic encompasses very well and is well worth a read. The topic of “front running” has received some publicity in the last few months. If you’re not familiar with the concept Nominet’s definition is helpful:
While nobody can deny that there maybe a certain amount of “front running”, it probably doesn’t warrant as much attention as people are currently giving it. During one of the SSAC’s sessions at the recent ICANN meeting in Los Angeles the topic was touched on briefly, but nobody has been able to provide any tangible evidence of it actually occurring. As someone who works in the internet business I’ve been contacted several times by clients who felt that they were victims of DNFR. Unfortunately for the clients none of the cases were genuine, as the names could easily have been chosen by someone else for perfectly legitimate reasons. One of the things that isn’t mentioned in the Nominet paper, however, is Whois caching. As Nominet is a registry it’s understandable that they may have overlooked this issue. In essence what happens is that larger registrars don’t use Whois lookups to check availability, as Whois is far too slow. It might work fine for Joe Soap who only sends a few queries to the servers per day, but when you are generating thousands of queries per hour you want and need ultra-fast responses. Rather than rely on the mechanisms underlying Whois many registrars use other methods, such as polling copies of zonefiles etc., to check domain availability. The result being that it is possible that a domain may appear to be available after it has been registered. Of course the time differences we’re talking about can be minutes or even seconds, but the average registrant probably isn’t aware of this. In any case, I hope that the SSAC and other organisations don’t waste too many resources on this sort of investigation. While it may have its merits there are other matters that are of much greater importance to both registrars and registrants that should be addressed and any time spent on secondary and less important matters is a distraction. Source Credit: This has been a featured post from Michele Neylon, MD of Blacknight Solutions. To learn more, visit this participant's full profile page.
More Under: Cybersquatting, DNS, Domain Names, Whois 
Stay Updated: To receive weekly email updates from CircleID sign up here or see the list of RSS feeds and mobile version of this site. Comments |
Start Your AdAds
Sponsored LinksMarketplaceIndustry UpdatesMay 15, 2008 11:28 AM PSTOverstock.com Chooses NeuStar’s UltraDNS for Managed DNS Service
By NeuStar |
Views: 134
May 14, 2008 11:37 AM PSTInside Your Domain Portfolio
By Sedo |
Views: 160
May 14, 2008 11:32 AM PSTSedo at Domain Roundtable 2008, San Francisco
By Sedo |
Views: 158
May 14, 2008 11:27 AM PSTSedo’s New Brokerage Application
By Sedo |
Views: 203
May 13, 2008 3:00 PM PSTICANN Unanimously Approves RegistryPro Proposal to Expand the .Pro TLD
By Hostway |
Views: 315
May 06, 2008 10:16 AM PSTOversee.net’s DomainSponsor Presents 3rd Annual DOMAINfest Global
By DomainSponsor |
Views: 524
May 02, 2008 10:21 AM PST.NL Auction Sneak Peak!
By Sedo |
Views: 596
Apr 30, 2008 10:01 AM PSTdotMobi Requests Proposals for find.mobi
By dotMobi |
Views: 809
Apr 28, 2008 2:08 PM PSTdotMobi Offers Prime Selection of Generic Domain Names to Spur Mobile Web Growth
By dotMobi |
Views: 1043
Apr 28, 2008 11:41 AM PSTSedo’s Better-than-Ever Brokerage Service!
By Sedo |
Views: 885
Start Your AdAds |
NeuStar, Inc. has announced that Overstock.com, a popular online closeout retailer, has chosen NeuStar's UltraDNS Managed DNS Service to provide Overstock.com with a global DNS infrastructure that significantly enhances end-user experience and operational security -- and protects revenue in the highly competitive online retail market. 
We've seen a lot of changes in the domain industry over the last year, some positive, some challenging. Whether you're an old pro or just beginning, this spring is a great time to take inventory and make sure your domain business is on the right track for success this year and beyond. 
RegistryPro, the exclusive operator of the .Pro top level domain (TLD), has 
The third annual DOMAINfest Global, the premier conference and networking event for the domain name industry, will be held at the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel in Hollywood, California from January 28-30, 2009. Event registration will open later this year. 
dotMobi today announced that is accepting proposals for find.mobi, a consumer-facing mobile search tool; find.mobi was created by dotMobi's research and development team to demonstrate an operational mobile search engine that made the most of the mobile web and needs of on-the-go users. |
Sitemap: Overview | Home | Desktop | RSS | Email | Mobile About CircleID: Overview | Media Coverage | CircleID Blog | Advertise | Contact Codes of Conduct | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use Copyright © 2002-2008 CircleID & Iomemo, Inc. All rights reserved unless where otherwise noted. |
 DNS Powered by NeuStar |
 Managed Hosting by Hostway |
I’m Jon Nevett, Vice President of Policy at Network Solutions. Regarding Nominet’s study of domain name front running, I don’t know about .co.uk, but the practice certainly exists in gTLD space. Based on our experience and investigations, we disagree with the suggestion that front running cases are merely coincidental with other online activities, and that the problem is little more than a “public perception” issue. Our customers certainly have suffered from this troubling practice, and other registrars have stated the same thing. We are in a much better position than registries to know that it’s happening. Something should be done to protect consumers from such practices — it cannot wait for endless ICANN studies and policy development. Unfortunately, the failure to act is undermining consumer confidence in the domain registration process.