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gTLD Registry Advisory: Correction of non-compliant ROIDs

Publication Date: 26 August 2015

Purpose:

This advisory intends to provide Registries using non-compliant Repository Object Identifiers (ROIDs) with the requirements to correct such ROIDs, while reducing impact on third parties.

The terms "MAY", "MUST", "MUST NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "REQUIRED", "SHOULD" and "SHOULD NOT" are used to indicate the requirement level in accordance with RFC 2119, which is available at http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2119.txt [TXT, 5 KB].

Background:

Per Specification 6 of the new gTLD registry agreement and the Functional Specifications Appendix of most legacy gTLDs, according to RFC 5730 (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5730), a globally unique identifier MUST be assigned to every object when the object is created. Registries must register their EPP Repository identifier with IANA (https://www.iana.org/assignments/epp-repository-ids).

Per the Registry Agreement, the use of ROIDs is required, at least, in the RDDS output, data escrow, BRDA, EPP and TMDB LORDN files.

ROID format will be verified during Pre-Delegation Testing (PDT) as part of the Whois tests cases. The verification will confirm the following:

  1. The ROID is properly formatted as described in RFC 5730; and
  2. The repository identifier is registered with IANA.

Starting on 2 November 2015, this verification will report warnings (no failures) for deviations, and strict enforcement for deviations (with failures) will start on 31 January 2016.

ROID correction plan requirements:

To update any non-compliant ROIDs, the following actions are required from the registry:

  1. The Registry MUST register their EPP Repository identifier with IANA. It is RECOMMENDED to use one suffix per TLD, where possible, with the purpose of uniqueness (e.g., use the TLD as the suffix for the ROID).
  2. The Registry MUST use a unique-per-object ROID in the format specified in RFC 5730.
  3. The Registry MUST notify all affected registrars of the upcoming change in the current ROIDs, specifying the date of the change and the transition plan.
  4. The Registry MUST provide the affected registrars and ICANN (through a Naming Services portal case), one of the following:
    1. The mapping of the old to the new ROIDs; or,
    2. A conversion algorithm to obtain the new ROIDs from the old ROID values.
  5. The Registry SHOULD maintain a ROID transition period for at least one month after the ROID update, during which SRS transactions using either old or new ROIDs are supported.
Domain Name System
Internationalized Domain Name ,IDN,"IDNs are domain names that include characters used in the local representation of languages that are not written with the twenty-six letters of the basic Latin alphabet ""a-z"". An IDN can contain Latin letters with diacritical marks, as required by many European languages, or may consist of characters from non-Latin scripts such as Arabic or Chinese. Many languages also use other types of digits than the European ""0-9"". The basic Latin alphabet together with the European-Arabic digits are, for the purpose of domain names, termed ""ASCII characters"" (ASCII = American Standard Code for Information Interchange). These are also included in the broader range of ""Unicode characters"" that provides the basis for IDNs. The ""hostname rule"" requires that all domain names of the type under consideration here are stored in the DNS using only the ASCII characters listed above, with the one further addition of the hyphen ""-"". The Unicode form of an IDN therefore requires special encoding before it is entered into the DNS. The following terminology is used when distinguishing between these forms: A domain name consists of a series of ""labels"" (separated by ""dots""). The ASCII form of an IDN label is termed an ""A-label"". All operations defined in the DNS protocol use A-labels exclusively. The Unicode form, which a user expects to be displayed, is termed a ""U-label"". The difference may be illustrated with the Hindi word for ""test"" — परीका — appearing here as a U-label would (in the Devanagari script). A special form of ""ASCII compatible encoding"" (abbreviated ACE) is applied to this to produce the corresponding A-label: xn--11b5bs1di. A domain name that only includes ASCII letters, digits, and hyphens is termed an ""LDH label"". Although the definitions of A-labels and LDH-labels overlap, a name consisting exclusively of LDH labels, such as""icann.org"" is not an IDN."