Tucows Opens Domain Name Registry

Tucows.com is still working on the site, but their Open Shared Registration System should be ready to go by November15. There's an API to proxy through their accredited server into the domain name database. Anyone can write their own client software based on theirs, which is GPLed. Their take is $13/year, easily the lowest yet: the idea is for others to customize their own client software, add value, resell domains, and start the price war.

Comments

Re:WTF?

[dr]

You still have to pay InterNIC... what's the point?

Ahh, but you won't have to pay as much (hopefully). This in turn will result in more money in your pocket each year (for beer). And it will add up to a bunch of savings for those of us who seem to have collected a bunch of domains during our travels (legitimately, not due to so-called squatting).

As a side note, I'd like to express my awe at the whole first post game. I still don't get it. Let it go already. Maybe the first 5-10 posts should display the user's IP so we can ridicule those who have nothing better to do at 2am than wait around to make the first post, with no inciteful text in the posting.

A Cheap Way To Be A Registrar

[Joel Rowbottom]

This looks very much to me like a quick cheap way to become a registrar without (a) paying NSI's $75 registration, or (b) without becoming a CORE registrar with all the bond and financial baggage which comes with it.

I suspect a lot of people out there will be very happy with this, mostly the small-time 'Net companies who have a rack in Telehouse and deal with lots of smaller clients. Having said all that, I know of at least one project which is creating a not-for-profit registrar along the same lines as the UK's Nominet registry, doing it on a membership basis. It'll be interesting to see how it all develops in relation to this project.

You mention "price war". If the "cost price" is $13, then I can see people doing domains at $13.01 - after all, with the sheer volume of domains registered it'll all add up just like call minutes do with UK dialup ISPs. The real benefactors of this are likely to be the ICANN/CORE registrars who do domains at $10 or so, who will swallow the glut of the business.

It's a pity it still has to go through NSI after all that though. And the site itself is mostly "coming soon" messages :(

BR,

Joel.

Hurry, register your domains BEFORE this comes out

[weave]

There's a big downside to cheap registration services. At least at $70 a pop, it kind of tempers most people from going nuts. Now that we can see really cheap domain registrations, anything that makes sense will be gone in no time.

Scumbags like mailbank.com have already registered over 10,000 surnames, just so they can sell mail aliases and web aliases back to people. Imagine, now they'll be able to afford to get every surname in the phone directory, if not already taken.

All I know is, I'm damn glad I grabed *MY* surname already, cause after this is done, the only available domain names left with be crap like.

• wqprjhqwmn.com
• wxttvnmyttp.org
• xzwscyoow.net