Hi all, Was out for 2 weeks and therefore unable to comment. Here is my brief statements * the real problem is not verisign getting pounded. I don't think that ever was the issue. The number of connections were reduced from 40 per registrar to 10 per registrar in the last 8 months. There is statistical data from reliable that shows that there were more commands being sent to the batch pool in Jan 2004 than there are as of today. Verisign can clearly reduce the number of connections from 10 to 5 or even 1 and reduce their load by 1/40th of the orignal load. The orignal system supported 100+ registrars at 40 connections. At 1 connection per registrar they should be able to support 4000 (I don't think we will reach that number ever considering the new NSI/TUCOWS model as such discourages any phantom creds now) * the real problem is phantom creds - ie registrars who accredited simply for batch pool access. The two solutions proposed by verisign to a certain extent take care of that issue, but the solutions are not effective * Solution 1 will render ICANN ending up with less than 50% of the 3.8 million they orignally anticipated collecting. This means in some indirect way we shall bear the brunt of that, or ICANN shall * Solution 1 also gives more chances to larger registrars, thus being unequal * Solution 2 to my mind as everyone points out can actually be worse - since it will bring about a status quo amongst the larger players to such an extent that noone except verisign will make the money * I do not think either of the solutions should be implemented. Infact here are the ONLY solutions that make sense - ===================== MY PROPOSED SOLUTIONS ===================== Solution 1: DO NOTHING ---------------------- * This is the simplest solution and it works. The market has considerably changed since this debate came up. * Firstly most registrars may shortly not allow names to expire judging NSI and TUCOWS' latest move. Infact I am quite certain of this eventuality - for various reasons which I will separately discuss. This has already prevented addtl phantom applications from applying. I will send out some hard data on this shortly * Secondly for the ones that already exist the number of names will reduce considerably * Thirdly for the ones that exist - verisign can simply reduce the number of connects to 5 or even 1 and have enuf bandwidth within their existing infrastructure to not impact them Solution 2: IMPLEMENT THEIR FIRST SOLUTION WITH SLIGHT MODIFICATIONS -------------------------------------------------------------------- * If solution 1 is implemented it needs to be fair and at the same time not jeopardize the ICANN budget. This maybe done as follows * create a separate pool where ONLY expired domain names maybe registered, so that both larger or smaller registrars get the same ratio of connect to this pool * modify the icann budget such that access to this pool does not fall in the forgiveness criteria * some of you may say that this model will not prevent the phantom creds issue - but I would suggest you to look around. That issue is already resolved. ONCE AGAIN ...... It is important to put up an official position on this one. I wonder (and I am new here ;) ) .... If we should ballot this. If yes then I can draft a ballot and send it out, after which we could share the official results with the concerned parties Best Regards Bhavin Turakhia Founder, CEO and Chairman DirectI -------------------------------------- http://www.directi.com Direct Line: +91 (22) 5679 7600 Direct Fax: +91 (22) 5679 7510 Board Line (USA): +1 (415) 240 4172 Board Line (India): +91 (22) 5679 7500 --------------------------------------