At 21:26 12/11/96 +1100, Geoff Huston wrote:
>This is my last post to such a massic cross post - I will cut the cc
>list to dns§intiaa in any further post I make..
>

I've done the same on this comment.


[Geoff said:]
>I would make a stronger statement:
>
>One could argue that that is their business IF AND ONLY IF the domain
>administration function is non-exclusive.
>
>While this organisation is in a monopoly position there remains the
>potential for the uncharitable view to be expressed that this is a
>simply a somewhat indirect method for the University of Melbourne to
>claw back some of this recent 12% funding cutback imposed by the
>Federal Government. Now while of course I do not personally subscribe
>to such a base view of Melbourne IT, my point is that while the
>current monopoly operates with charging applied the organisation
>cannot readily defend itself from the accusation of all kinds of base
>profiteering without a very open approach to the income and expenses
>and services operated by this organisation in undertaking this
>function.
>
>


And there are no shortage of potential providers of a parallel service
acting as a DNA in the COM.AU namespace. Yes, I'm one of 'em - if it were
possible to work out how to make this happen in political terms. 

Until it does, I strongly agree with Geoff - an "in principle" non exclusive
situation is in fact completely exclusive until there are multiple DNA's
operational in this space.

Until that point, I find the concept of Melbourne IT forcing me to on-charge
all of my customers circa $100 each on February 1st to be rather outrageous.
All I need for the existing delegations that are fully operational now is
for them to be _left alone_, not for someone to charge me money to leave
them alone.

More significantly, the operators of the registry for .COM renew these
things on the anniversary of their creation (and do it for _one_ year, not two).

Melbourne IT say (probably rightly) that they don't have the anniversary
dates for these things. Well guess what - we, as ISP's *DO* have the
anniversary dates for all of the domains we've had delegated for customers.
So, I suspect, do most other ISP's. Thost anniversaries are the points at
which our customers will be likely to cope with the idea of an additional
impost. But arbitarily on February 1st? That's pretty unpalteable - to be
charged for something I never asked for with respect to those existing names. 

I think that Melbourne IT should commit to accepting _any_ alternative
anniversary date for existing domain names that is nominated by the ISP who
is handling the domains, if they can specify one. That measure of trust on
their part would be a welcome change to the amazingly distrustful financial
arrangements Melbourne IT is operating (strictly their nominated
inconvenient forms of cash-in-advance for any service at all - if we
operated that way, noone would deal with us - but as an effective monopoly,
I have no choice but to work on those rules at this time). I don't like this
situation one iota.

In other words, if I have to pay cash in advance for any sort of service,
how about delivering a _service_ in response, including sensible flexibility
with respect to renewal dates for existing names in the com.au space.
February 1st is unacceptable. But right now, I can say "this is
unacceptable", but until Melbourne IT are not the monopoly provider of this
service, I have absolutely no option for my customers if Melbourne IT don't
choose to agree with my point of view on this.

I hope that they will doing ISP's the service of writing us a form letter to
send to our customers (preferably putting it on their web page as well for
reference) so I have something to point my customers to when they object (as
they will) to being charged an additional fee in February that they (and we)
never expected to pay.

Simon Hackett
---
Simon Hackett, Technical Director, Internode Systems Pty Ltd
31 York St [PO Box 284, Rundle Mall], Adelaide, SA 5000 Australia
Email: simon§internode.com.au  Web: http://www.on.net
Phone: +61-8-8223-2999          Fax: +61-8-8223-1777