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newsletter://mv.com
March 2002
New top level domain registrations
We have been working on adding some new top level domain names to our
domain registration functions. We've made some available as of this writ-
ing, and others will be coming available as either the Internet registrars
make them ready or as we finish implementing our procedures for processing
them.
The brief information presented here is current as of March 22 2002.
We're getting the others ready quickly, so check our web page or ask our
Customer Service representatives for up to date information -- as well as
more detail. Go to our web page at http://www.mv.com/ and click on "Rates
and Services" -- you'll see the domain registration section listed there.
.INFO -- available now: The .INFO top level domain is open and available
now, for the same annual price as registrations in .COM, .NET, and .ORG .
The .INFO domain is a new name available for registration of any name that
isn't already taken. The basic domain name (other than .INFO) must be at
least 3 characters long, but other than that follows the same guidelines as
any other domain name (must begin and end with a letter or digit, and con-
tain only letters, digits, and hyphens).
When you register a new .INFO domain, you must sign up for a minimum
of two years. Our charge for this initial registration is $24, with a
$12/year renewal.
.US -- preregistrations available now: .US is a country code top level
domain for the United States. Until recently, management of the US domain
was fairly decentralized, but with rules governing the kinds of names that
could be registered. For the most part, names had to conform to patterns
based on the geographic area served and on the type of entity involved. In
the fall of 2001 the administration of the .US domain was awarded to
Neustar, Inc. While the old, currently-registered names will be kept in
place, new registrations will be more like other familiar top level
domains. There are some requirements, as noted here and on our web page.
Registration in the .US domain is currently in a "Sunrise" period.
"Sunrise" applicants must hold a trademark or service mark at the US Patent
and Trademark Office, and the domain name must be consistent with that
trademark or service mark. Sunrise applications end on April 9. Between
April 9 and April 24, these applications will be granted, selecting from
duplicate names randomly. Sunrise registrations must be for a 5-year
period; if your application is granted, we will charge you $60 for this
registration.
After April 24, registrations will be taken on a first-come first-
served "real time" basis. From then on, applicants for .US domain names
will have to meet one of three "US Presence" requirements -- roughly, you
have to be a US Citizen, a business incorporated in the US, or have a bona
fide presence in the US. In cooperation with the OpenSRS registrar, MV
Communications is taking orders for these domain names. These advance
orders will be placed in a queue and fed into the Neustar registration when
the real-time process is opened on April 24. To help this process, you can
select up to 6 domain names for each application. Real-time registrations
will be charged $12/year and must have an initial 2-year registration (for
$24). As with the sunrise applications, you will only be charged if your
application is accepted.
Other top level domain names (.CA, .BIZ, .NAME, .TV): Please watch our web
page for the status on these names.
The time of year for pranks
April 1 is coming soon. (That is probably news only to a very small
number of you.) We'd just like to take a short paragraph to warn you not
to be too gullible when that date hits. Every year on April 1st thousands
of Internet pranksters take the opportunity to create April Fools jokes --
in years past we've seen official-looking documents about how Microsoft is
acquiring the Catholic Church, about how the Internet is closed for clean-
ing, on a standard for a hypertext coffee pot control protocol, and so
forth. Be especially wary if you see something idiotic that makes you want
to sit down and draft a well-reasoned rebuttal -- check the date first. By
the way, your shoe is untied.
mediaone.net vs attbi.net vs attbi.com
An issue of possible interest to many of you is the recent domain name
change of the MediaOne cable network. MediaOne was acquired some time ago
by AT&T but continued to use mediaone.net domain names for most if not all
of those subscribers it acquired. Recently AT&T was (probably) forced to
give up the mediaone.net domain as a result of a lawsuit from a business
that felt it was entitled to that name and was suffering damages from the
cable network's use of the name. (The details of the suit are neither here
nor there for the purposes of the few words written here.)
AT&T/MediaOne cable customers have scrambled of late to change over to
using names in the attbi.com domain name instead of in mediaone.net . Some
of the names were straightforward substitutions, some were not. The tran-
sition was due to be finished in mid-March, and indeed we observed that
most of those mediaone.net names stopped working around that time.
So where do you come in? Some of you are also customers of AT&T and
have (or had) mediaone.net addresses; but many more of you probably corre-
spond with people or businesses with those addresses. You may be affected
in any of these ways:
* you may be sending mail to old mediaone.net addresses (or accessing
the domain name in other ways) -- make sure you get the correct new
address.
* You may be sending mail to a new attbi.net address accidentally- that
won't work, because the domain name is attbi.com, not attbi.net.
We're seeing a significant number of emails stuck in our queues and
eventually bouncing back because of this error.
* You may have an account at MV that in one way or another involves a
mediaone.net address. For example, you may have a forwarding address
set up; you may have a web page with reports being sent to a
mediaone.net address; you may have a domain name with some of its com-
ponents resolving to a mediaone.net address; your email billing
address may be something at mediaone.net . We've tried to locate as
many of these as we could and contact the affected customers, but
please consider whether you have this problem.
Political Letters Followup
In late February we issued a couple of email bulletins to all of our
customers having mailboxes at MV Communications. We have very rarely done
this -- you can probably count on one hand the number of times we've sent
mass email to our customers over nearly 11 years of being an ISP. This
time we sent an alert about a political issue that's very important to the
future of independent ISPs. We won't belabor it again here, other than to
say that if you missed it you can still go to http://www.mv.com/issues/ and
read about the Tauzin/Dingell House bill to find out what it's all about.
We'd like to thank you all for the tremendous support that this mail-
ing received. Unfortunately the House bill passed -- and as we predicted
this was used as "proof" by the FCC of what Americans wanted. The FCC
almost immediately acted to give a greater monopoly position to cable oper-
ators, and is in the process of doing similar things for the Bell companies
such as Verizon. Some of these actions are open for public comment, some
are not. We will try to keep the "issues" URL (http://www.mv.com/issues/)
updated with what we think are important things to consider.
We are also very appreciative that Rep. Sununu "got it" and voted
against H.R. 1542 in the House. This was a gratifying rational stand.
Make no mistake: there were no party lines here and we are not suggesting
any partisan approval. We're just happy for the stand and the vote.
MV Communications, Inc. PO Box 4963, Manchester, NH 03108 (603) 629-0000