registries .is Discussion

[Jens P. Jensen]

Hello,

I have opened this thread for discussions about the ccTLD .is, which has recently got more attention from Domainers world wide. ISNIC is the Registry for .is and I am the CEO. I am happy to answer questions about the TLD .is, participate in discussions as well as place a comment on Ideas from the community.

Jens Pétur Jensen
CEO
ISNIC, the. is Registry
Reykjavik
Iceland.

 

[Kate]

A coupon for domainers ?

 

[Jens P. Jensen]

A domain name holder (the Registrant) has the right to use the domain for as long as he or she fulfils the ISNIC Domain Rules (General Registry Rules according to RFC's Standards) and pays the yearly fee (continues the subscription). This right to use is defended by ISNIC and by Icelandic law. However someone else could have a higher right to the domain/word/phrase, but would have to have his right recognised by Icelandic law (e.g. by the Court of Reykjavik, by the Icelandic Consumer Agency or by the Board of Appeals which operates independent of ISNIC. Per definition one can't "own" a domain name, but is as a Registrant never the less the "owner" of the rights to use the domain name. This involves the right to use, park, sell or lease the domain.

 

[Alan Glennon]

Jens -- Welcome! It's great to have the authority on the .is top level domain here at Namepros.

 

[Kate]

DNS servers that do not comply with the technical requirements will be rejected. .is not a special case, .de is also famous for being strict on DNS, and other ccTLDs too. Many parking DNS do not fulfill the requirements (at least two NS on separate subnets).

Using a third party DNS is usually a good idea, to depend less on the registrar, to avoid interruption of service while transferring the domain name to another registrar, and for added redundancy.
Some free services will do the job. Example: dns.he.net

 

[Jens P. Jensen]

Thank you all so much everybody for very good comments and suggestions. I will discuss them at our next Friday-Afternoon staff-meeting (after having had some beer .

Please understand that ISNIC is a tiny Registry with only 60.000 domains and nine (9) employees. We are also different in the way that we allow direct registrations for everyone – something which confuses many of our customers–rightly–they think we are a Registrar, which we are not. But the "glass wall" between Registries and Registrars might be dissolving allowing Registries to provide more service with the domain in very near future.

I'll do my best to have the ISNIC's service and website upgraded. HotKey's comments on not being able to hide the address have been taken seriously. On the other hand all good hosting companies, e.g. Cloudflare.com, have no trouble following ISNIC's (secure and healthy) Tech. Req. for Name Servers.

ISNIC
/Jens.,

 

[Kate]

The best is to always use a third-party DNS service, not your registrars'.
For example, dns.he.net will work fine with .is domains, it's free for up to 50 domains. Other similar services exist.

The parking companies are lacking when it comes to their own DNS:

ns1.bodis.com [199.59.243.21]
ns2.bodis.com [199.59.243.22]

ns2.sedoparking.com [209.200.165.74]
ns1.sedoparking.com [209.200.164.69]

2 NS on the same subnet = no redundancy
Quite frankly, it is not acceptable for a parking company or a web hosting company not to follow best practices in this area.

.is is not the only TLD that is rather strict about delegation requirements, .de is also famous for being as strict, and some other ccTLDs have similar rules too.

 

[GoKaizen]

https://time.is/
https://archive.is/

 

[Jens P. Jensen]

Here are few very short .is domains that just got deleted:
fc.is
bd.is
zt.is
zm.is
zj.is
yk.is
yj.is
yh.is
xj.is
qy.is
74.is
qz.is
xf.is
xh.is
zd.is
zl.is
yg.is

 

[Jens P. Jensen]

Happy weekend, thanks for all the tips and questions this week!
Are you sure its Friday? Check it out: www.erfostudagur.is

 

[Jens P. Jensen]

Thank you Alan, glad to be here in this nice community.

 

[Jens P. Jensen]

Go Kate

Welcome to NamePros, Jens.

Peace,
Cyberian

Thank you Cyberian.

>>Coupon for domainers? Good question. Not yet I am afraid, but who knows! ISNIC is new here so we need to understand things a little better before we move for Coupons (and build it into the system .

 

[Jens P. Jensen]

oh yes, the option "Address with held" is free (of course) but name and country of Registrant appears in our public Whois.

 

[noonoo1]

Hi Jens,

Welcome to namepros, I did register 3 .is domains last year but let them drop as no public sales since 2015

Would like to see the Chinese market take on .is

 

[Casey L]

Do you have any tools to view expired .is domains?

 

[Jens P. Jensen]

Hi Jens,

Welcome to namepros, I did register 3 .is domains last year but let them drop as no public sales since 2015

Would like to see the Chinese market take on .is[/QUOT

Do you have any tools to view expired .is domains?

Thank you for the question. I am sorry, no, but this question keeps coming up. Many years ago you could subscribe to the delete list at ISNIC, but the Registry was forced to stop the service do to many complaints from Registrants that had "lost" their domains (because of stupidity). I guess this would no longer be an issue? Let me check this out within the Registry along with Kate's Idea of Coupons.

 

[HotKey]

Hi Jens, and welcome to NP- nice to see you on here.

I've held an account at ISNIC for a number of years now, and have found the enforcement of your domain name policies very very strict, in particular external nameserver delagtion. If there is any deviation whatsoever from your RFC5966 and RFC1912, there is danger of this:

ISNIC periodically checks domains in the .IS zone for compliance with these requirements, and informs the domain contacts should their domain fail. Domains that consistently fail to comply will be suspended (i.e. removed from the .IS zone file) until their technical setup is fixed. Please note that domains are deleted if they are left suspended for more than 60 days.

This is a message I have received on a number of occasions, and had been forced to move nameservers from a popular DNS service such as Namecheap, to a more obscure one, for example, just so I don't risk losing my name. This does not instill confidence that registering a name through ISNIC is a safe thing. I remember having to test a number of DNS companies before finding one or two that saitisfied the ISNIC requirements.

This would not be an issue for your users if you considered more DNS options than basic forwarding from your site.

oh yes, the option "Address with held" is free (of course) but name and country of Registrant appears in our public Whois.

Yes but email address is also displayed. This wouldn't be a problem except for the fact that the displayed email address is ALSO the ISNIC account address. IMO this is a security concern. You should consider an option of allowing us to have a different contact email for our .is domains rather than the account login one.

 

[HotKey]

DNS servers that do not comply with the technical requirements will be rejected. .is not a special case, .de is also famous for being strict on DNS, and other ccTLDs too. Many parking DNS do not fulfill the requirements (at least two NS on separate subnets).

Using a third party DNS is usually a good idea, to depend less on the registrar, to avoid interruption of service while transferring the domain name to another registrar, and for added redundancy.
Some free services will do the job. Example: dns.he.net

Yes but the onus is on us, as users, to seek out and find this adherence. This makes it difficult to manage .is domains at Isnic, which is a turn-off to registering them. There could be usability improvments, and I think it's worth it for the registry to consider some. Dot-is is a great extension.

 

[daved2424]

Hi Jens, and welcome to NP- nice to see you on here.

I've held an account at ISNIC for a number of years now, and have found the enforcement of your domain name policies very very strict, in particular external nameserver delagtion. If there is any deviation whatsoever from your RFC5966 and RFC1912, there is danger of this:

ISNIC periodically checks domains in the .IS zone for compliance with these requirements, and informs the domain contacts should their domain fail. Domains that consistently fail to comply will be suspended (i.e. removed from the .IS zone file) until their technical setup is fixed. Please note that domains are deleted if they are left suspended for more than 60 days.

This is a message I have received on a number of occasions, and had been forced to move nameservers from a popular DNS service such as Namecheap, to a more obscure one, for example, just so I don't risk losing my name. This does not instill confidence that registering a name through ISNIC is a safe thing. I remember having to test a number of DNS companies before finding one or two that saitisfied the ISNIC requirements.

I would like to echo these comments. I have had a .is domain for several years, but because of the difficulty in finding a suitable hosting provider that will work with ISNIC I have been unable to make use of it.


Please, please, please can you support more providers? Namecheap for one!

 

[Jens P. Jensen]

Hello Daved2424,
>Please, please, please can you support more providers? Namecheap for one!
Your question should be the other way around, i.e. you should ask Namecheap and other providers to provide name servers that comply with the very healthy, simple but secure tech. req. of .is: https://www.isnic.is/en/host/req. You should not ask ISNIC to lower its DNS security

More and more hosting companies and ISP providers understand the importance on DNS security. Here is a list of some very good hosting companies you can trust with your valuable .is domains. Order by the number of hosted .is domains today. We where told Namecheap is considering supporting (comply) the .is
1. cloudflare.com
2.
hyp.net
3.
101domain.com
4.
iwantmyname.net
5.
parkingcrew.net
6. dnsimple.com
7.
udag.org
8.
dreamhost.com
9.
co.uk
10.
eurodns.com
11.
cscdns.net
12.
instradns.com
13.
dnsmadeeasy.com
14.
markmonitor.com
15.
netnames.net
16.
trademarkarea.com

Kind regards, please support more DNS Security for better Internet.

ISNIC
/Jens.,

 

[Jens P. Jensen]

Jens -- I haven't studied the isnic site recently. Is there documentation that explains how to configure .is settings for sites hosted on common service providers used by startups (e.g., Amazon Web Service, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, IBM Bluemix, Heroku, and/or Digital Ocean)?

Sorry for my late answer. All you (the hosting service) need to know and do is:
1. To register their Name Servers by ISNIC: https://www.isnic.is/en/host/new
2. comply with all of the following requirements: https://www.isnic.is/en/host/req

As simple as that!

p.s. why can't all hosting companies be as good as CloudFlare.com? Here is an fantastic blog for those very interested: https://blog.cloudflare.com/how-we-made-our-dns-stack-3x-faster/

 

[Karl Grand Maison]

Be honnest... Who made that search? ... pen.is...

 

[anantj]

Meaning that if a domain is parked, why should it have to meet ISNIC tech. req?

I think you misunderstood. Two issues that I'm trying to state: 1. I can't park the domain due to the restrictions at ISNIC, 2. The parking NSes were examples that such heavily used servers don't work, smaller, less popular NSes have an even lesser chance of being conformant (this is anecdotal) that such heavily used servers don't work, smaller, less popular NSes have an even lesser chance of being conformant (this is anecdotal)

p.s. why can't all hosting companies be as good as CloudFlare.com? Here is an fantastic blog for those very interested: https://blog.cloudflare.com/how-we-made-our-dns-stack-3x-faster/

Presumably, because all hosting companies either do not have the resources/funds or the energy. Not taking a potshot but I can make a similar statement for the UI/UX of the ISNIC website. Such a comment really does not help the average user.

 

[Jens P. Jensen]

Jens -- I haven't studied the isnic site recently. Is there documentation that explains how to configure .is settings for sites hosted on common service providers used by startups (e.g., Amazon Web Service, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, IBM Bluemix, Heroku, and/or Digital Ocean)?

Didn't I give you answer on this, sorry here are the URL's anyway:
Nameserver Requirements: https://www.isnic.is/en/host/req
Nameserver Setup Check: https://www.isnic.is/en/host/req
Domain Requirements: https://www.isnic.is/en/domain/req
Domain Setup Check: https://www.isnic.is/en/domain/test

Its all located on ISNIC's front page, left in the red column under Domains and Nameservers.

 

[Jens P. Jensen]

Any news on the expired .is list? I would be interested in that.

A list of .is domains before they drop or after they dropped.

Hi Kostaki, this is not (yet) something we publish regularly, but here is the todays list (mostly Icelandic domains). Remind me again next Tuesday, then we will have a longer list.

miraart.is
vgarborg.is
zetafilm.is
hreinn.is
th1s.is
dílar.is
uppbodstorg.is
spegillinn.is
islandslysi.is
carib.is
bílasalahafnarfjarðar.is
mumm.is
azn.is
bilasalahafnarfjardar.is
myfuture.is
appo.is
icelandnaturetours.is
nomnom.is
berry.is