Earlier this week the .nz registry announced that they’d made the switch to CIRA’s (the .ca domain name registry) domain registry backend software.
CIRA have been quite successful in winning over country code operators to switch to using CIRA’s software to run their backend systems. The .ie ccTLD switched over to the CIRA system previously. In both cases the software and infrastructure is hosted “in country” and NOT in Canada.
The press release goes into some of the detail as to why .nz made the choice to switch to a 3rd party solution away from their own proprietary registry system:
The country code top-level domain of Aotearoa New Zealand – .nz – is now powered by an industry-leading registry solution. It’s based on the CIRA Registry Platform, the infrastructure behind the .ca domain name. InternetNZ will continue to manage it and keep all the .nz-related data in New Zealand.
InternetNZ Chief Executive, Vivien Maidaborn, says, “This significant investment into our infrastructure future-proofs .nz for Aotearoa New Zealand. We partnered with CIRA for the .nz registry replacement in 2021 because they understand the unique requirements, values and expectations of running a country code top-level domain.
“It’s an incredible feeling and a great privilege to be at the beginning of a new chapter for .nz. Our partnership with CIRA was fully remote throughout the development and migration, proving yet again that the Internet connects people across the globe to deliver solutions for the public good. The new system enables us to provide critical infrastructure for New Zealand for years to come,” says Maidaborn.
“We are thrilled to welcome .nz to our community of forward-thinking TLDs,” says Adam Eisner, General Manager, Registry Services, CIRA. “This collaboration was a true partnership, and we’re excited to help bring next-generation features and reliability to .nz registrars and registrants.”
There are many benefits for .nz authorised registrars, says Tim Johnson, InternetNZ’s General Manager, Customer and Product.
“The new registry empowers .nz registrars with more self-service capability and reduces technical barriers for new registrars. We also included a lot of new security controls in the system, responding to the challenges of constantly changing threats. The service will be easier to maintain, update, and operate over the long term.
“The team has built the new registry and the infrastructure for it despite the pandemic and supply chain disruptions. Thanks to this effort, the registry now has a modern, more secure, features-rich home,” says Johnson.
The CIRA Registry Platform is currently in use with the .ca (Canada), .ie (Ireland), and other Top Level Domains (TLDs). Joining this growing community allows InternetNZ to benefit from ongoing platform development and upgrades alongside other TLDs and contribute to the platform’s stability and strength.
Now that .nz is on a new platform, InternetNZ no longer uses the Shared Registry System protocol (SRS) and fully transitioned to the globally adopted Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP). The domain name industry standardisation enables InternetNZ to deepen collaboration with international counterparts.
From a registrar perspective a registry platform that uses EPP is much simpler to work with than one that uses proprietary systems.
It’s also nice to see a bit of competition in the registry backend space, as the consolidations over the last couple of years have effectively led to the reduction of players in the market as a small number of companies have bought up quite a large number of their competitors.
