[LINK] Oldest registered .au domain?

[Roger Clarke]

Ivan Trundle <ivan at itrundle.com>:
>So who came first in .com.au?
>[and .net.au, org.au, etc., and oz.au]

As the Institute coughs up snippets, I'll be recording them for a 
future update of the [only?] [semi-official??] history of the 
Internet in Australia [semi-official in that the National Library has 
archived it].

I didn't focus on the DNS when I did that research, because of course 
it was an add-on rather than the fundament (albeit an increasingly 
important add-on).

The relevant bits of the most recent version are at:
http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/OzI04.html#8589
http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/OzI04.html#EPub

Further musings below.

__________________________________________________________________________

In particular, "In March 1986, soon after the domain-name system was 
deployed, IANA delegated the .au ccTLD to Robert Elz, at Melbourne 
University"

[So anyone who claims to have had a '.au' domain-name before March 
1986 is likely to either be telling porkies or having a memory-slip.]

"From 1986 until 2001, the authority for the .au domain was with 
Robert Elz. For a considerable period of time, all second-level 
domains (2LDs) were entirely administered on a voluntary basis. Elz 
delegated to Geoff Huston, who administered edu.au, gov.au and 
info.au; Hugh Irvine, through connect.com, administered net.au; and 
Michael Malone, through Connect West, administered asn.au. Elz 
himself administered com.au, org.au, id.au and oz.au.".

[Regrettably, I never ran to earth any hard evidence of the dates of 
the various delegations, nor the actual dates of subsequent transfer 
/ re-delegation to auDA.  The paper does declare the dates of Geoff's 
delegations, which I think I got from Geoff himself, for gov.au as 
1993-1998 - re-delegated to NOIE now AGIMO - and for edu.au 1993-2001 
- re-delegated to auDA, and on to education.au in 2003].

"From the outset [of the open public Internet in Australia] in 1994, 
Australia has had about the fifth to tenth largest number of active 
domains of any country. The heavy majority of these were in the 
com.au domain."

"With effect from October 1996, Robert Elz awarded a five-year 
licence to administer com.au to Melbourne IT Ltd.  ...  In November 
1999, however, Robert Elz delegated the authority for .com.au to a 
newly-formed not-for-profit company, .au Domain Administration 
(AuDA). ...  Having formulated its key policy statements, auDA 
approached ICANN in June 2001, seeking the transfer of the delegation 
for .au from Robert Elz to AuDA.  ...  [Messy interlude deleted] ... 
The transfer was effected on 25 October 2001. Between mid-2001 and 
mid-2002, auDA progressively gained re-delegations for the other four 
'open' domains from their longstanding (and long-suffering) volunteer 
registrars. Since then, auDA has had the authority to administer the 
whole .au name-space."

[The current authorities can be variously found and interpolated at:
http://www.auda.org.au/domains/au-domains/
Except of course .oz.au, which auDA leaves almost entirely undocumented.]

[The discussion of early 'ISPs' (better described as 'IAPs') is at:
http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/OzI04.html#CIAP

[A snapshot of the domain-names of various early IAPs is preserved in 
aspic. or amber (or maybe e-spic or e-mber) at:
http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/zik.faq.9403.html


-- 
Roger Clarke                  http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/
			            
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Visiting Professor in Info Science & Eng  Australian National University
Visiting Professor in the eCommerce Program      University of Hong Kong
Visiting Professor in the Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre      Uni of NSW