It doesn’t have to be this way.

A RAR can model the registry policy and auto-renew the name in its database, or keep the dates in sync via EPP <info> commands. There’s nothing that says that the expiration date has to remain in the past until the customer pays for it, the RAR has other means to inform its customer that the service has expired.

regards,

On 21 Jan 2016, at 21:29, Pat Moroney wrote:

I personally don't yet have an opinion on whether we should implement this
extension, but I did want to point out a very common case where the
registry expiration date differs from the registrar expiration date. And
that is during the autoRenew period. If the customer hasn't yet paid the
registrar for a renewal, the registrar expiration date will be in the past,
while the registry expiration date is a year in the future. I know for a
fact that this can be confusing for registrants and happens in both thick
and thin registries who autorenew domains at expiration. But, as I said
before, I haven't looked extensively into this extension and the reasons
for it yet, and there may be a easier or better way to remove the possible
confusion.

-Pat Moroney
Name.com

On Thu, Jan 21, 2016, 21:26 Patrik Fältström paf@frobbit.se wrote:

On 22 Jan 2016, at 3:22, Andrew Sullivan wrote:

I'm prepared to admit that registrars' data could be out of sync. But
surely this ought to be a bulk operation?

If things are out of sync, having both dates (that are out of sync) in the
registry does not help.

The registry expiration date, which is already in the registry, is
definitely enough.

What is in the business agreements between the registrar and registrant
has nothing to do with the lifecycle of a domain name. And sure, some
registrars do have, on request from their customers, coordinated payment
cycles across all domains in the portfolio of the registrant. That the
registrars today also expose those values in whois might be a bug, a
feature or whatever. But we can not have as a goal that the registry should
include information about those dates etc.

Can we please instead try to make the lifecycle of a domain name simpler
so people do understand it? Already today it is extremely complicated.
Specifically in the end game, and yes, as pointed out, that is used by some
registries and registrars in a way that is viewed by some as not 100% "ok".

Patrik

--
-Pat Moroney
Sr. Software Engineer
Name.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1GKGXXF12c
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