Blog: Garth Miller

Engr Ndukwe Kalu, President of NIRA, the Nigerian Internet Registration Authority, died unexpectedly in Lagos last week. He was a member of CoCCA, the Council of Country Code Administrators, and was a strong supporter of CoCCA. “His humor, encouragement, suggestions and sage advice were welcomed by our organization, which had few contacts in the region,” said Garth Miller, Director of CoCCA, in an article on his passing.

Over the last 18 months he worked with CoCCA to bring the .NG registry to a stable and secure infrastructure. “We remember him for the zeal he has contributed to the activities of NIRA particularly the landmark achievement of full control of Nigeria’s domain name on May 13, 2009 leading to full local management of the registry ”, said Vice President of NIRA, Mrs. Mary Uduma. At the time, Engr Ndukwe Kalu said of the redelegation, “The attempt to obtain full control met with a lot of challenges because as a totally new entity the executive had to concentrate on putting in place the required structure and infrastructure that would sustain the .ng ccTLD.”

Local management of the .NG registry allowed NIRA to utilize the CoCCA registry platform, which is a fully automated EPP system. Enabling Anycast DNS ensured 100% uptime world wide, bringing the .NG registry up to par with other world-class registries. The .NG registry continues to thrive and is systematically opening up to international registrations. Under Ndukwe Kalu’s guidance NIRA set a goal to become one of the top 20 ccTLD registries by 2011 in order to “positively impact the Nigerian economy because with the development of the Nigerian cyberspace countless opportunities would be born for both the state and citizens.” More information about the redelegation efforts may be found at allAfrica.com.

Our thoughts and best wishes are with his family and colleagues.

Over the last few months we’ve been assisting CoCCA founder Garth Miller to help developing-nation country-code top-level domains upgrade their knowledge and infrastructure through the Minds + Machines Capacity Building and Grant Program. This program has so far funded regional workshops in southern Africa and the airfares to attend them, along with knowledge-transfer programs between regional ccTLDs. In addition, as we continue to improve the Espresso registry platform, we have introduced Espresso CC for country-code top-level domains, a high-quality EPP registry services platform for ccTLDs.

Today we’re happy to announce that Madagascar (.MG) has upgraded to the Espresso CC (country-code) registry platform.

To quote from the news page at CoCCA:

The Madagascar Network Information Center ( NIC-MG ) has completed their migration to the Espresso CC EPP registry platform…. NIC-MG has deployed a state of the art registry system, deployed a Whois server and is in the process of requesting ICANN update the the .mg ROOT-SERVER records to include anycast technology for maximum redundancy.

NIC-MG registry system will soon have off-site fail-over and escrow. DNSSEC is being studied with a view to deploy in the first quarter of 2010.

The changes in the technology being utilized by NIC-MG will be accompanied by a review of policy and procedures to address abuse of intellectual property rights, cyber-crime and protection of the public interest. The new system will allow local 24/7 registration and updates through various registrars, local ISP’s and other technology companies.

MINDS + MACHINES SIGNS EXCLUSIVE ARRANGEMENT WITH COCCA — MOST WIDELY DEPLOYED OPEN-SOURCE REGISTRY PLATFORM FOR COUNTRY-CODE EXTENSIONS TO BE ADAPTED TO NEW TOP-LEVEL DOMAINS FROM ICANN

MEXICO CITY (March 1, 2009). Minds + Machines has been granted the rights to the CoCCA registry software and the CoCCA brand for generic top-level domains. Minds + Machines will enhance the core code and features for new top-level domains and brand the platform as “Espresso,” which will be available in both hosted and locally-installed versions. CoCCA’s highly-praised work with country-code extensions will continue to be developed and made available to members of CoCCA to manage a ccTLD registry as a royalty-free open-source package.

The exclusive arrangement will mean very low prices for Espresso customers. By adding any of Minds + Machines’ consulting and marketing services, or services from Minds + Machines partners, new TLD applicants will be able to work with Minds + Machines to build their TLD cost-effectively.

“I’ve been watching use of CoCCA explode in country-code top-level domains. They’ve been winning because of their superior technology, low prices, and customer-first way of doing business,” said Antony Van Couvering, CEO of Minds + Machines. “After seeing that other registry offerings were expensive and confusing, I was convinced that a partnership with CoCCA was the solution. I am very pleased to be able to begin from this great open-source foundation.”

“We are delighted with the arrangement,” said Garth Miller, head of Cocca Registry Services (NZ) Limited, the entity responsible the for development of the CoCCATools software on behalf of CoCCA Members “because it provides additional funding resources that will ensure that our software meets the challenges posed by the deployment of IDN TLDs, DNSSEC and other technologies required by our members.”

Minds and Machines will develop the CoCCA code and provide relevant improvements back to the open-source CoCCA codebase.

“More TLDs currently operate directly on CoCCA’s code than any other registry service provider,” said Minds + Machines COO, Jothan Frakes. “It is written in Java and adheres to the RFCs for registration, resolution, and whois information, works with IDN, IPv6, and DNSSEC over Anycast for DNS resolution and is secure and standards-based. It adds ease and elegance to registry operations, can be configured in an afternoon, has an existing channel of major registrars who are already contractually and technically integrated, and can be configured to work with any currency or language.”

For more information, contact Elaine Pruis at elaine[at]mindsandmachines.com