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By: OpenSRS Team on December 23rd, 2009
Posted in: Announcements
Tags: Holiday Hours
Comments: 0

Happy Holidays from the OpenSRS team. Most of our offices will be closed from the afternoon of December 24, 2009 through the morning of January 3, 2010. Our Technical Support team continues to be available 24/7 to assist you.

photo by Frank Lemire, Technical Support Team Lead

Here are the hours by department:

Please note that during this closure, there will be:

• No orders or requests processed for the following TLD’s: (.at, .fr, .nl, .ch, .li, .it, .dk, .com.mx)
• No special processing for .ca (registrant transfers, conflicting and municipal registrations) or .eu/.be (redemptions).

We are looking forward to working with you in the new decade. Happy Holidays to you, your business colleagues and your families.

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By: James Koole on December 18th, 2009
Posted in: Industry News, OpenSRS Services
Tags: .CN, ccTLD
Comments: 3

Last week, CNNIC, the Registry operator for the .CN domain extension, unexpectedly set out new rules surrounding the registration of .CN domains.

Since that announcement, we’ve been working with Neustar, our .CN registration partner, to determine the exact impact that these new policies will have on .CN registrations through OpenSRS.

The news is not especially positive.

These new policies, as set out by CNNIC, have a direct, negative impact on the viability of continuing to offer .CN domain registrations through OpenSRS. If you are selling .CN domains through OpenSRS, please stay tuned over the coming weeks as we address the business impact and make further determinations about how we plan to address continued support of .CN domains.

New Policy Details

Beginning December 21, 2009, all new .CN domain registrations will require the submission of additional paperwork to CNNIC in order to ensure that the registration is completed. The full text of the new requirements is available at: http://cnnic.cn/html/Dir/2009/12/12/5750.htm

In summary:

• Documentation for new registrations is now required to be submitted, by email or fax, directly to CNNIC. Do not forward documentation to Tucows/OpenSRS. Complete information about what is required along with documents for download can be found at http://opensrs.com/resources/domains/policies/#cn
• Failure to submit the required documentation within five (5) calendar days of the registration will result in the domain being deleted.
• New domain registrations will not appear in WHOIS or begin to resolve until the audit of the documentation has been completed by CNNIC. That process could take up to three (3) days from when the documents are received.
• Currently there is no process to track the progress of the audit process.
• Any .CN Registrations that fail due to incomplete documentation will be refunded monthly by OpenSRS.
• Renewals are NOT affected.

We recognize the significant impact this will have on .CN domain registrations. We continue to support .CN registrations through OpenSRS, with the understanding that the onus is on the Reseller to ensure that the proper documentation is submitted directly to CNNIC.

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By: Michael Goldstein on December 16th, 2009
Posted in: General
Tags:
Comments: 6

Hi, I am Michael Goldstein, the new VP of Marketing at Tucows.  This is actually an exciting return to Tucows for me.  I was here 10 years ago, first promoting the software collection, then launching OpenSRS.  I left soon after we hit 2 million domains under management.  (I gave away two cows at ISPCon in San Jose to celebrate the occasion.)  I since spent a few years on the retail side of domain names and Web hosting at Register.com and then several years at ad agency Ogilvy & Mather, managing campaigns for TD Ameritrade, Doubleclick, GlaxoSmithKline and Kraft Foods.  From Web hosting to breakfast cereal and back again.

My goal here now is to do a lot of what I think we did quite well 10 years ago.  I want to inspire and foster conversations.  I want to learn from you about how we can improve our services.  I want to offer you thoughts, observations, customer insights, data, tactics, anything I can to help you grow your businesses.  (I’ll be spending part of my time experimenting with our Hover business, largely in hopes of sharing any successes.)  I would even love to get you swapping more ideas among yourselves.   Of course, I also want to get us some more resellers.  Toward that end, I figure I need to do all the above really well and then inspire and foster conversations between you and our prospects.

I am really happy to back.  (I suppose I should mention that I have also crossed a border, from New York to Toronto, to come here.  It’s a big career move and a big life change, for me and my family.)  My email address is mgoldstein@tucows.com.   Please email me anytime with thoughts about your businesses, OpenSRS, marketing, the good old days, the future, New York, Toronto, breakfast cereal or anything else on your mind.

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By: Adam Eisner on December 14th, 2009
Posted in: Industry News
Tags: .CN, ccTLD
Comments: 0

Over the weekend, CNNIC (the Chinese Internet Network Information Center which controls the .CN domain) made an announcement that it is implementing a new policy beginning today, December 14th, 2009, that affects all new .CN registrations.

Under the new policy, individuals are effectively barred from registering .CN domain names as CNNIC now requires a paper application which includes a business seal, company business license (photocopy), and registrant ID (photocopy).

More information:

• China Global Times article
• CircleID post

At this time, we are working with Neustar, our registration provider for .CN domains, to determine the exact details of the new policy. It is not yet known what impact this new policy will have on .CN registrations.

For the time being, we continue to process registrations as usual.

We will update the Reseller Blog with further information as we receive it.

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By: James Koole on December 7th, 2009
Posted in: Industry News, OpenSRS Services
Tags: .EU, ccTLD
Comments: 0

.EU is the latest ccTLD to announce that they are adding support for Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) registrations.

IDN support in .EU domains goes live on December 10th, 2009 at 10:00 UTC (view the time in your timezone). At that time, something of a landrush will occur as .EU IDN domains will become available on a first come, first served basis. Prior to that time, OpenSRS Resellers can create pending orders in OpenSRS. As soon as our Registry connection is re-enabled after .EU IDN support goes live at the Registry, we’ll begin attempting to register pre-orders as quickly as possible.

IDNs are domain names that contain non-ASCII characters. Generally, these are non-English domain names. For example, the Swedish å, the German ü, the Romanian ? and characters from the Bulgarian and Greek alphabets as a whole. It’s important to note that these IDN domains are so-called, “before the dot” registrations. That is, the IDN characters are restricted to the part of the domain that is before the dot – the “example” part of example.eu – as opposed to having a non-English version of the part after the dot – the “eu” extension itself.

Given the wide range of languages spoken throughout the European Union, it makes a lot of sense for .EU to offer IDNs and it’s expected that demand for IDN EU domains will be strong.

EURID has put together a fairly extensive information portal for the IDN launch. You’ll find information about which languages and characters are supported, as well a list of frequently asked questions about .EU IDN registrations.