Any help help would be great. I have a new client in New Zealand, who has a domain name .co.nz with a company called www.xtra.co.nz and the client wants to change their Name Servers to point to my web server, but they are giving her all this grief about how my firm has to become part of the www.dnc.org.nz and pay $2,250 per application so I can have permissions to change these settings for .co.nz domain names.

DOES THIS make sense to anyone. IS IT ILLEGAL to change Name Servers for clients in New Zealand, or have the client change their Name Servers, which they won't allow. They only provide the client with a UDAI #.

Any help would be appreciated.

Best Regards.

Hi PJ

xtra is the largest ISP down here in NZ and I certainly wouldn't use them as a domain registrar. They are too expensive and from your clients experience don't seem to have a clue!

I would ask your client to transfer her domain to someone like freeparking.co.nz. I have several domains with them and have had no trouble changing nameservers using the control panel on their web site.

There is info about transferring to freeparking here www.freeparking.biz/transfer_and_save.mv

HTH
Geoff

Thanks a lot for your help

Your customer probably got someone from Xtra who doesn't know what they are talking about.

As suggested, the easiest solution is to transfer the domain away from Xtra.

I use freeparking.co.nz also and they are very good.

Freeparking.co.nz is a free DNS service like MyDomain.com ?


a bit off topic , but can everyone register a .co.nz domain, or only people within New Zealand ?

and what are the .maori.nz domains ? A seller of subdomains, or a real ccTLD ?

Freeparking is a domain registrar and owned by webfarm.co.nz which is a Webhosting company.

They do offer free URL forwarding.

I believe anyone can own a .co.nz.

The .nz domain name commisioner's website is available at:

http://dnc.org.nz

A copy of the core registrant terms and conditions for .nz are published here:
http://dnc.org.nz/content/registrant_core_terms_and_conditions.pdf

.maori.nz is a certified 2nd level domain.

At present, I believe all 2nd level .nz domains are controlled by the DNC. I think this is currently being reviewed as whether or not to open up 2nd level domains to the public.

.geek.nz ?? .gen.nz ?? .iwi.nz ?? .cri.nz ??

what are all those things ?

Although the first one has its possibilities ? "Free subdomain service: register your [name].is.geek.nz !"

Basically what happened is to get a new second level domain introduced a proposal had to be written and presented to the DNC with valid reasoning on why the new 2LD should be introduced.

Initially I think there was only .co.nz, .org.nz, .net.nz and .gen.nz.

Once a proposal is accepted there is a vote run and people (perhaps only internet NZ members?) can vote whether or not the new 2LD should be introduced.

Over time groups put in proposals for new 2LD's and the collection grew.

.iwi.nz was brought in for cultural reasons, for the NZ Maori people. I believe there was some tribes that weren't happy with .iwi.nz so .maori.nz was introduced.

It started getting rediculous when a proposal was put forward for .bank.nz. I believe .bank.nz was voted out twice, but there is nothing stopping a group or organisation re-applying for the 2LD and submitting a new proposal.

Soon people realised that if they didn't get voted in, they could just re-submit the proposal and hope to eventually get voted in.

As a joke and to point out the stupidity of having so many 2LD's, some people representing the technical/geek community put forward a valid proposal for .geek.nz. It was accepted and voted in as a new 2LD.

The DNC then put applications for new 2LD's on hold as obviously it seems silly having so many 2LD's and a vast majority believe no more should be introduced or if more are to be introduced it should be open to the public as was done with .ca

So at present I think opening up the *.nz namespace is presently being reviewed.

I hope this answers some of your queries anyway.

P.S. This is my recollection/intepretation of the events... I could be wrong ;)

If you are looking at purchasing a .nz domain. I'd probably only go for a .co.nz or perhaps a .net.nz.

.geek.nz may have use for fun value or marketing purposes.

The other 2LD's are really not very commonly used.

.ac.nz is for academic organisations.
.school.nz is for NZ schools.
.gen.nz I believe was intended for personal/general use...

Yeah, but I think they're not all open for public registry.

.mil.nz and .govt.nz for sure, but it wouldn't surprise me if .gen.nz wasn't as well.
Strange that different tribes have their own domain. I didn't even know NZ still had tribes :confused:

So I guess we can as well expect .aboriginal.au 2LD domains within a while ? :D


.CA open ?? I think you need an address in Canada to be able to own a .CA

What I mean by "open" is that you can register for the domain automatically if you meet their basic criteria - instead of having to draft up a proposal and get voted in before the 2LD is introduced.

Perhaps .com is a better example in that case - I just used .ca as an example as I believe in the past it had a hierarchy also, where domains were allocated depending on physical location.... though I could be wrong ;)

I think .gen.nz doesn't have any restrictions... just most people don't bother using it :)

of course .ac.nz, .school.nz, .govt.nz etc would have restrictions.

So I guess we can as well expect .aboriginal.au 2LD domains within a while ?

If it gets to that, I'd start to worry.... it's bad enough here in NZ :D

I better be quiet now... moving offtopic

:blush:

every domain that is taken yet with the .com.au , .net.au , .org.au and .id.au extention would be available again with the .aboriginal.au extention, so it's not all bad :)


imagine you want domain.co.nz but it's taken yet. Then you may be lucky you could still buy domain.geek.nz or domain.maori.nz :)