RE: multinational already started???

[James Woods]

Hi Bill, Ah the bq-- issue. It's a hot one amongst the participating registrars. Let me give you some background..... On Sunday when I checked the registry DB...of the 25+million domains registered there were 704 bq--* variations. When I checked just a few minutes ago I came up with 898. A few weeks ago when we switched prefix (as told by the registry) from ra-- to bq-- there were none. So yes folks are being mighty brave and smacking down some speculative $$ on the hopes that these will work...however there are a few important points to note: Currently the testbed requires us as registrars to not only send the multilingual names and regular tech, billing and contact info, but also the encoding type (shift-jis, Big5 etc.) So these names that have been registered in the production DB are lacking the encoding type. As well the bq--* prefix will likely change a few times as the test bed rolls on through its various stages (so says the author of the IETF Draft on RACE). So to the speculators out there I say "good luck"...and to the rest of us patiently waiting for the 10th I say...Good Luck!! I'm expecting a call from the registry at the 11th hour saying "OK the new prefix is...." and we will do it and that will be that. I'll be mindful to keep you all updated on this and the Live resellers list of late breaking news. If and when that happens the technical impact to you is negligible. Great Questions Bill! Cheers, James M. Woods Product Manager Tucows Inc. 416-535-0123 ext. 1491 www.opensrs.org www.tucows.com -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Bill Wilson Sent: Monday, November 06, 2000 11:04 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: multinational already started??? Hi. I just got the multinational name client working. After encoding several key names in RACE and looking them up in the whois directory, it seems Japanese companies are already registering RACE encoded names, like: bq--3ayeuvankjgq.com (name.com in Japanese) Is the bq-- prefix already confirmed? What's going on? Bill