At 8/29/01 10:06 AM, Cameron Powell wrote: >We do not pay for connections; indeed, to do >so would violate the Registry-Registrar Agreement, which is another reason >most registrars are smart enough not to sell their bandwidth to speculators >or resellers outright. Rather, we simply share revenue with our partners to >serve the largest number of their customers If I understand you correctly, you're saying you don't pay for them up front, but registrars give them to you in exchange for a portion of your revenue (beyond the normal registration fee)? If so, I don't see how that changes anything. You're getting more connections than most resellers, because registrars get more money from you (per registered domain) than they do from most resellers. That would count as "paying for" the connections in my mind. This discussion has definitely firmed up my opinion on the initial question of whether I'd be interested in SnapNames offering their services to me. If OpenSRS has 50 spare connections they want to sell (excuse me, give freely in exchange for revenue sharing), it's their choice to give them to one reseller (such as SnapNames), or set up a system where many resellers could backorder small numbers of names directly, or whatever. I'd prefer the second choice, as I said. If they instead go with the first choice, then offer resellers a system to sign up with SnapNames (who are a form of competitor) for back-ordered domains, I wouldn't take advantage of it unless it was made to feel pretty much like the first choice -- almost totally transparent and with a pay-only-if-successful pricing scheme. But that's just me. -- Robert L Mathews, Tiger Technologies
