Quoting Chris Wright on Thursday September 18, 2003:
| 
| > We are migrating to EPPv9, the latest standard in provisioning
| protocols.
| 
| In fact we are doing things here that most European registries are not.
| Few other registries actually use EPP (yet alone version 9)! 

Well, it is a little disingenuous to talk about EPP version 9. There
is still no version 1 - rather - various different drafts have been
circulated working toward a standard. The final standard is in the RFC
Editor Queue and should be out shortly.

As you know I dont think EPP is a bragging point over other registries,
because most other registries would have to uproot their current
infrastructure to change to it. Just because it is the latest protocol
doesn't mean registries should hastily move to it. Australia was in
a unique position to do so because there was a regime change, but
there are good reasons why a stable, fully functional registry with
other interfaces should not rush to implement drafts of an incomplete
standard.

If some hypothetical new registry-registrar interface came out in 6
months, I would be surprised if Australia ditched EPP and moved to it
whilst it was still being written. That is basically what it would be
like moving established R-R based registries to EPP now.

With regard to your upgrade from Draft 6 to Draft 9 - how is this being
implemented? Will registrars be forced to update within a certain
timeframe? I am curious about the urgency and what the benefits are. Is
there an onus on registrars to recertify their systems?

| No other
| (that I know of) has implemented "real time" DNS updates? Few use TSIG
| signed zone transfers? Few allow IPv6 glue records?

Others have real time DNS updates. Most use TSIG or OOB transfers. IPv6
glue records are available in many registries.

kim