RE: Expiration times [was Re: domreg BOF Meeting Minutes]

["Hollenbeck, Scott" <shollenbeck@verisign.com>]

I can live with this.  How's this for work on the last sentence:

"The protocol MUST provide features to ensure that both registry and
registrar have a mutual understanding of the validity period at the
conclusion of a successful registration event."

Scott Hollenbeck
VeriSign Global Registry Services

-----Original Message-----
From: Geva Patz [mailto:geva@bbn.com]
Sent: Thursday, December 21, 2000 2:30 PM
To: 'ietf-provreg@cafax.se'
Subject: Re: Expiration times [was Re: domreg BOF Meeting Minutes]


On Thu, Dec 21, 2000 at 01:56:40PM -0500, Hollenbeck, Scott wrote:
> I think I misread one piece of your most recent proposal (reading
> "registrars" where you wrote "registries").  The way you characterized the
> requirement mapping in your last paragraph gives me an idea, though - why
> not phrase the requirement like this:

> [2] The protocol MUST allow a registry to implement policies allowing a
> range of domain registration time periods, where registrars MAY choose to
> offer (not necessarily identical) subsets of the range of periods, and
where
> registrants get to choose an element from that subset.

Why not, indeed! (I find it remarkably hard to argue against what
are practically my own words :) I'd perhaps suggest a slight
re-wording to enhance clarity while (I hope) preserving the
semantics of the original wording you suggest above:

[2] The protocol MUST permit a starting and ending time for a
registration to be negotiated, thereby enabling a registry to
implement policies allowing a range of registration validity
periods, and enabling registrars to select a period for each
registration they submit from within the valid range based on
out-of-band negotiation between the registrar and the registrant.
Registries SHOULD be allowed to accept indefiniteily valid
registrations if the policy that they are implementing permits,
and to specify a default validity period if one is not selected
by a registrar. The protocol MUST ensure that, at the successful
conclusion of a registration event, the registrar and registry
have the same, unambiguous, conception of the validity period of
the registration.

The wording of the last sentence probably needs work. What I'm
trying to avoid here is the situation where a registrar, on
1/1/2001, says "Register domain name X from now until 3/1/2001",
and the registry says "OK", and silently rounds the validity
period up to a year. The protocol should either have the registry
respond with "I can't do that!" or "OK, I've registered the name
until 12/31/2001".

I've also resuscitated the rare but necessary case of indefinite
registrations (some ccTLDs use these, as do some non-domain name
identifier registries).

-- Geva