[registrars] New Registry Service Offering

["Michael D. Palage" <michael@palage.com>]

Hello All:

Last week I raised the issue of working on a protocol for how registries
would roll-out new service offerings. Although I had been working on a much
more detailed flow chart, I thought it prudent to start with a clean slate
and ask some fundamental questions that will guide the rest of our
discussion.

Attached is a copy of a first draft of the revised flow chart which is based
upon the following five concepts:

I - Is the new service offering by the registry a "core service" or an
"ancillary service". This is probably one of the most important questions
that we will ask in this entire discussion. Based on the discussion last
week about DNS hosting and other ancillary services I propose the following
distinction. A registry service is defined as a "core service" if it is
technically impossible for a third party to offer the service independent of
the registry operator. All registry service offerings that do not qualify as
a "core service" are explicitly defined as an ancillary service.

II - Comment Period. This area of discussion will focus on the mechanisms
and methods for the dissemination and gathering of feedback from interested
third parties.

III - Resolution. As we are experiencing first hand, resolving potential
conflicts is going to be one of the most complex issues to address. As
mentioned last week, I believe most disputes can be categorized into one of
three categories: policy, technology, and price. Although a couple of people
raised the issue of who was offering the service as an additional concern in
the context of the current WLS debate, I believe that this issue is properly
covered under the Policy umbrella.

IV - Technical implementation window. This will focus on working with
registries to provide us with tool kits and other resources in a timely
fashion.

V - Registry service goes live. I believe this area of discussion will focus
on what happens with problems after the launch of a service.

If you believe there are other additions/deletions that need to be made to
this chart at this conceptual level please tell me. Otherwise I would
propose that we begin breaking down the above referenced individual areas
into separate more detailed flowcharts.

Best regards,

Michael Palage

Registry-Service-Protocol.PDF