June 25, 2018
The au Domain Administration's (auDA) membership numbers recently swelled, with the addition of 995 new members to its ranks.
auDA is the policy authority and industry self-regulatory body for the .au domain name space.
The membership drive was the result of one of the recommendations of the Federal Government’s Review of the .au namespace released earlier this year, which stated the body should diversify its membership and with a focus on extending it to underrepresented auDA stakeholders.
“This is a very positive move for the .au domain space and will further strengthen the operations of auDA by broadening the membership base," said auDA CEO, Cameron Boardman.
A total of 29 recommendations were made in the review (PDF), which was released in April.
"auDA has accepted all of the Review recommendations, and is working on modernising the operation of the respected .au domain space for the benefit of all stakeholders and ultimately the consumers who rely on Australia’s safe and stable top-level domain," states the body.
In other recent auDA news, the body announced on Friday the .au registry will undergo a maintenance period between 8am AEST, Saturday 30 June 2018 until 8pm AEST, Sunday 1 July 2018 as services are transitioned between registry operators.
As mentioned earlier this month, June is the final month AusRegistry will act in the role of registry operator of the .au name space; a function it has fulfilled for many years. From July, the role will be carried out by Afilias.
The transition will not affect the functionality of .au domains, but auDA advises during the maintenance period registrants of Australian domain names will not be able to be create, renew or change name settings/records.
Afilias is very confident of a smooth transition.
"Afilias moved the entire .org domain (currently 10M names versus .au’s 3M) over a decade ago, and nobody who was using .org names knew anything about it - service continued uninterrupted," stated the company earlier this month.
This won't mark the first time Afilias has been involved in the evolution of the Australian domain name space - the company's engineers helped build the original architecture and structures for .au in 2002.
As the new registry operator and as was the case with AusRegistry, Afilias won't be offering registration services direct to the public; that is a service carried out by accredited .AU domain registrars and their resellers.
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