InternetNZ Tuesday announced it is cementing its relationship further with their Canadian counterpart the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) through customising and deploying the CIRA Registry Platform for .nz. The new .nz registry will be fully operational by late 2022 and InternetNZ will continue to run and maintain it on-shore.
“We evaluated a number of different registry platform solutions, and we chose the CIRA Registry Platform because it will provide .nz with world-class stability, flexibility and useability,” said InternetNZ Group Chief Executive Jordan Carter.
“We are also very pleased to be working in partnership with another registry operator in CIRA that shares our public good goals and community ethos.”
InternetNZ has been building a relationship with CIRA over the last couple of years since they launched a cybersecurity product, Defenz Domain Name System (DNS) Firewall, which is a white-labelled version of CIRA’s D-Zone DNS Firewall. The firewall protects internet users from phishing attacks, malware, ransomware and botnets. It also stops malware already on the network from accessing the Internet.
“We could not have found a better partner than .nz,” said Byron Holland, president and CEO, CIRA. “They share our vision for how a modern country code top-level domain (ccTLD) should operate and are an industry peer we often look to for inspiration. Our two organizations share a common DNA and a shared vision for the future of our industry.”
In adopting this new platform, InternetNZ will deprecate its proprietary Shared Registry System protocol (SRS) and standardise on the globally adopted Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP).
“We are already working with our customers to prepare for this change and keep New Zealanders online with .nz,” says Carter.
The CIRA Registry Platform is a next-generation TLD platform that leverages CIRA’s more than 20 years of experience managing the .CA domain to create a flexible, robust registry platform to support a modern TLD business. It is currently in use with both the .ca (Canada) and .ie (Ireland) registries.
“Welcoming .nz to our platform adds another great ccTLD to our growing community and provides us with the opportunity to collaborate with their innovative team to bring a fresh perspective to the CIRA Registry Platform. We are building a community of like-minded TLDs to help us transform the industry for the next 25 years, and .nz will be a key part of that evolution,” said Dave Chiswell, general manager, registry services, CIRA.
InternetNZ has been the home of .nz since 1997 and has over 720,000 .nz domain names. This multi-million dollar investment in a new registry platform will, the .nz country code top-level domain (ccTLD) registry says, allow InternetNZ to keep meeting New Zealand’s needs for a world-class domain name service.
“.nz is already the most preferred domain name option for New Zealanders due to its security, reliability and trust. The new registry will allow us to provide an even greater level of service to our registrar customers and New Zealanders,” says Carter.