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https://www.ausregistry.com.au/sett...s-role-audas-registry-transformation-project/
"Setting the record straight
In the spirit of clarifying some of the claims that have been made throughout this process, I wanted to take the opportunity to clear up some points – because the .au community deserves to be fully informed.
The claim: There will be an improvement of the .au customer support service with 24/7 coverage
The truth: Neustar already provides 24/7 customer service and technical support, based in Australia
In a blog post Afilias announced that “no registrar will need to wait ‘til tomorrow’ to resolve a problem” due to the partnership between its Melbourne and global service centres to provide 24/7 support, also claiming that this service is “beginning July 1.”
Neustar’s Australia-based team includes the entire .au operations personnel; from our already 24/7 support to all our developers, DBAs and network engineers. We have provided this service for a long time, so this will not be a new offering to Registrars.
The claim: Western Australia will be better served due to a dedicated DNS node installed in Perth
The truth: Neustar already operates a DNS node in Perth, and regardless this does not guarantee the claimed improvements
In a press release on June 13, Afilias and auDA claimed that “Users of .au domains in Western Australia will now have more resilient DNS.” This is billed as a significant improvement to .au infrastructure in WA.
Neustar already has nodes in Perth, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. Also, it’s important to understand that just because there’s a locally-located DNS node, it doesn’t mean that will be where a user’s query ends up. This “new” Perth node is not providing any improvement to service than what is currently offered. In addition, Neustar has 30 global DNS nodes supporting its full Registry system plus the largest DDoS mitigation platform in the world, with 10Tbps of mitigation capacity. It’s unclear what protection (if any) will be safeguarding .au in the future.
The claim: The new Registry offers superior technology
The truth: The new Registry system is retrofitted and not bespoke to .au
The current Neustar Registry platform has two dedicated sites in-country (active/active) to support the technical demands of .au, with full failover possible in under a very short amount of time in case of a serious incident. The new Registry will switch to one dedicated site in Melbourne that is managed by engineers, DBAs, and developers mostly based overseas – with a cloud-based stand-by (cold site). The question is: has this been tested to see how quickly emergency failover can be implemented?
In addition, our current understanding is this new setup has been retrofitted from other TLDs; whereas our Registry was custom-built for .au, with over 16 years of development to explicitly meet all auDA policy and technical requirements. It was also built here in Australia and therefore has always stored and managed all .au data in-country.
The claim: The new .au Registry will provide enhanced security for DNS
The truth: Neustar is a world leader in DNS security and runs a global network with more than sufficient capacity to support .au
Afilias has pointed to “massive capacity, smarter DNS, [and] DNSSEC deployment” as “enhancements” to the protection and safeguarding of .au.
In actuality, Neustar’s existing DNS is scaled globally to handle capacity massively above the regular volumes of traffic. Not only this, Neustar has multiple layers of security and features to handle unusual traffic, attacks and denial of service events. This includes firewalls, auto withdrawal of nodes, intelligent DNS response and DDoS scrubbing of data streams – in fact, Neustar is a global leader in DDoS mitigation, with a scrubbing capacity of over 10Tbps. DNSSEC is also already deployed across multiple .au zones and is available to Registrants through the Registry.
The claim: Registrars will see upgrades to their systems when the Registry is transitioned
The truth: The new Registry systems will have reduced feature sets
Neustar is proud of the relationship we’ve built with .au Registrars over the last 16 years. Over that time we’ve worked closely and developed true working partnerships that have allowed us to collaborate on making the .au Registry as efficient as possible for the benefit of Registrars and ultimately the .au internet community.
We’ve raised a number of concerns directly with auDA about what we considered to be inaccurate remarks comparing Neustar’s systems with the new Registry and implying that the new Registry will include “all previous functionality plus enhanced security and authentication measures”, as stated in recent auDA Member communications. We questioned auDA about this and were informed that the statement is comparing the various testing phases of Afilias’ Registry – so the latest version has “all previous functionality” of the earlier versions. It doesn’t mean the Registry will have “all previous functionality” of Neustar’s platform – which we believe the statement implies. ...."
https://www.ausregistry.com.au/sett...s-role-audas-registry-transformation-project/
"Setting the record straight
In the spirit of clarifying some of the claims that have been made throughout this process, I wanted to take the opportunity to clear up some points – because the .au community deserves to be fully informed.
The claim: There will be an improvement of the .au customer support service with 24/7 coverage
The truth: Neustar already provides 24/7 customer service and technical support, based in Australia
In a blog post Afilias announced that “no registrar will need to wait ‘til tomorrow’ to resolve a problem” due to the partnership between its Melbourne and global service centres to provide 24/7 support, also claiming that this service is “beginning July 1.”
Neustar’s Australia-based team includes the entire .au operations personnel; from our already 24/7 support to all our developers, DBAs and network engineers. We have provided this service for a long time, so this will not be a new offering to Registrars.
The claim: Western Australia will be better served due to a dedicated DNS node installed in Perth
The truth: Neustar already operates a DNS node in Perth, and regardless this does not guarantee the claimed improvements
In a press release on June 13, Afilias and auDA claimed that “Users of .au domains in Western Australia will now have more resilient DNS.” This is billed as a significant improvement to .au infrastructure in WA.
Neustar already has nodes in Perth, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. Also, it’s important to understand that just because there’s a locally-located DNS node, it doesn’t mean that will be where a user’s query ends up. This “new” Perth node is not providing any improvement to service than what is currently offered. In addition, Neustar has 30 global DNS nodes supporting its full Registry system plus the largest DDoS mitigation platform in the world, with 10Tbps of mitigation capacity. It’s unclear what protection (if any) will be safeguarding .au in the future.
The claim: The new Registry offers superior technology
The truth: The new Registry system is retrofitted and not bespoke to .au
The current Neustar Registry platform has two dedicated sites in-country (active/active) to support the technical demands of .au, with full failover possible in under a very short amount of time in case of a serious incident. The new Registry will switch to one dedicated site in Melbourne that is managed by engineers, DBAs, and developers mostly based overseas – with a cloud-based stand-by (cold site). The question is: has this been tested to see how quickly emergency failover can be implemented?
In addition, our current understanding is this new setup has been retrofitted from other TLDs; whereas our Registry was custom-built for .au, with over 16 years of development to explicitly meet all auDA policy and technical requirements. It was also built here in Australia and therefore has always stored and managed all .au data in-country.
The claim: The new .au Registry will provide enhanced security for DNS
The truth: Neustar is a world leader in DNS security and runs a global network with more than sufficient capacity to support .au
Afilias has pointed to “massive capacity, smarter DNS, [and] DNSSEC deployment” as “enhancements” to the protection and safeguarding of .au.
In actuality, Neustar’s existing DNS is scaled globally to handle capacity massively above the regular volumes of traffic. Not only this, Neustar has multiple layers of security and features to handle unusual traffic, attacks and denial of service events. This includes firewalls, auto withdrawal of nodes, intelligent DNS response and DDoS scrubbing of data streams – in fact, Neustar is a global leader in DDoS mitigation, with a scrubbing capacity of over 10Tbps. DNSSEC is also already deployed across multiple .au zones and is available to Registrants through the Registry.
The claim: Registrars will see upgrades to their systems when the Registry is transitioned
The truth: The new Registry systems will have reduced feature sets
Neustar is proud of the relationship we’ve built with .au Registrars over the last 16 years. Over that time we’ve worked closely and developed true working partnerships that have allowed us to collaborate on making the .au Registry as efficient as possible for the benefit of Registrars and ultimately the .au internet community.
We’ve raised a number of concerns directly with auDA about what we considered to be inaccurate remarks comparing Neustar’s systems with the new Registry and implying that the new Registry will include “all previous functionality plus enhanced security and authentication measures”, as stated in recent auDA Member communications. We questioned auDA about this and were informed that the statement is comparing the various testing phases of Afilias’ Registry – so the latest version has “all previous functionality” of the earlier versions. It doesn’t mean the Registry will have “all previous functionality” of Neustar’s platform – which we believe the statement implies. ...."
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