Well Cindy I've had exactly the same experience except manually
attempting it over and over (basically on a whim) using OpenSRS
interface. I have some domains that have expired years ago with NSI and
are still functioning fine and never deleted. Based on that I was
extremely surprised that this particular domain that did allow me to
register it after about 90 days from it expiring and being removed from
the root servers. I think you'll find that trying to register it over
and over has no bearing on it. It appears to be a whim at NSI as to
whether domains are released or not. The cynical side of me thinks that
if NSI looks at the domain and expects it to be renewed then they don't
delete it. If they suspect it belongs to a defunct entity then they
might release it.
The cynics might also guess that they could track activity on their
whois server and if an expired domain is often looked up then there
might be some interest in obtaining it and therefore they shouldn't
release it until the prospective buyer comes to them (under their
snapdomain hat or similar approach).
Who knows if using the registration interface flies under the radar that
whois may have up? Doubt they track failed registration attempts... in
fact I doubt they could unless there's some feeding of information from
the registry to the registrar (NSI) that shouldn't legally happen.
You can drive yourself crazy trying to predict NSI behaviour but I'd
take the "luck" you've gotten as the exception and not any sort of
predictable rule. Especially now that Verisign is claiming to not
release any domain names that have expired for the next while.
That's my thoughts for now... if you do find a predictable behaviour do
let us know, eh? :)
Jack
CDale wrote:
>
> Before I was OpenSRS ready, I had a few clients I had to register domains
> for, so I used domain-zone. One of my clients had a domain at NSI that he
> wanted transferred, and it was past the expiry date, but was in the state
> of being owed for, so I suggested we wait a little while, but told him
> that it might take forever. Well, I guess domain-zone tries to do the
> transfer a couple of times a week till it takes. It finally transferred
> to us yesterday. While we're both pretty happy that this worked out, I
> wonder if I'd've had such luck had I just tried to transfer it a few
> times, or if there is better results when you try keep trying, often, to
> transfer the name. Anyone else had this sort of luck?
> Cindy
>
> --
> "My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not
> signed." (Christopher Morley)
