[FreeDNS] Re: Inactive domains

[Jan Henkins <jan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Christiaan,

Mark has some excellent suggestions. I've experienced his co.za system 
now for years, and the workflow is very good. There are "anal" aspects 
to the co.za system that I think ZaNic doesn't really need, for instance 
the exhaustive checks on whether all NS servers have been set up 
correctly (both A records as well as matching PTR records, mind you!). 
For a commercial registry it's critical, but for a free registry, this 
might not be so important.

Implementing Mark's suggestions will definitely make things better for 
the future, including things like handling conflicts and inactive 
domains. I've recently moved to the UK from sunny RS of A, so if you 
need somebody to help designing and implementing this, I would be glad 
to be able to help. In the meantime it would be a good thing if we can 
think of an interrim, "organic" process to help with things like 
inactive domains.  Not sure what to do about it now, but I hope to dream 
up an interesting process that could be considered in handling these 
situations.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	FreeDNS Digest, Vol 39, Issue 3
Date: 	Wed, 12 Jul 2006 17:15:32 +0100 (BST)
From: 	freedns-request@xxxxxxxx
Reply-To: 	freedns@xxxxxxxx
To: 	freedns@xxxxxxxx


Message: 6

Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2006 15:27:46 +0200
From: Mark J Elkins <mje@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [FreeDNS] Inactive domains
To: The ZA NiC FreeDNS mailing list <freedns@xxxxxxxx>
Message-ID: <44B4F8D2.6000402@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Christiaan Keet wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 12, 2006 at 02:20:42AM +0100, Jan Henkins wrote:
>   
> > Hello there,
> >
> > I would like to know what the resolution process would be for reclaiming 
> > inactive domains. In at least one such case, I have tried to get in 
> > touch with the registered owner of the domain, but nothing came back. In 
> > fact, the DNS servers listed as primary for that particular domain 
> > doesn't exist any more. What can we do in such cases? Commercial 
> > registrars have workflows in place for such situations ranging from the 
> > sublime to the rediculous, but what would the process be here?
> >
> > Thanks in advance! :-)
> >     
>
> Jan,
>
> Excellent question. We've actually got this question fairly regularly,
> especially in the last few months. I'm ashamed to say that we've
> never got round to working out a proper solution for this scenario.
> So far the answer has pretty much just been "sorry, can't help you".
> I guess for "regular" registrars that charge recurring fees for
> domains it's easier to deal with... customer doesn't pay, domain
> expires, domain gets released for re-registration after X period.
>
> If someone has a bit of time and wants to think the whole process
> (and pitfalls!) through and come up with some suggestions we'll
> definitely see if we can work it in though!
>   
Hi all... as the person who originally wrote and automated the co.za
system - maybe I can comment.
The main reason that we changed from an Update fee to a Yearly fee was
to try and stop contact data getting stale and for clearing out domains
if they were no longer needed. This has worked quite well.

In a free model system - I believe that you'd need a system to do
several things....

Only add a delegation once all the nameservers are up and running - do
all the cross-checks - etc. Record the SOA Serial number at the registry.

Every so often (once every three or six months) - check that the
Nameservers are still in sync and again fetch the SOA serial number. If
the Nameservers are in Sync or the SOA serial number is changing -
everything is probably OK.

If the Nameserver checks fail and the SOA serial number is not changing
- retry 10 or so times - backing off logarithmically (double the retry
time?)

On every second Nameserver check failure -
 e-mail the registrant and the SOA e-mail contact (containing the
Nameserver check results) - and get them to somehow acknowledge that the
domain is not in use or fix their Nameservers

There needs to be some sort of condition in the terms and conditions
that in the event that the Nameservers are broken and e-mail requests
remain unacknowledged that the domain is then automatically removed.

(maybe ignore the SOA Serial Number bits)



--
Regards,
Jan Henkins


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