Legal

CIRA Registrar Advisory - Priority = Low - Q2 Release Notes

To all Registrars,

Highlights of changes for Q2, 2008 and recent changes to the WHOIS implementation

There are a number of changes that have been made to the WHOIS implementation since January, 2008.

1. New production release date for WHOIS
The production release of the new WHOIS functionality is scheduled for Tuesday, June 10, 2008. CIRA will be sending an email notice to Registrants later today (May 9).

2. Online forms instead of paper-based forms
Based on Registrar feedback provided to CIRA during conference calls, CIRA decided to change paper-based WHOIS forms into online forms:

• New non-individual Registrants are provided an opportunity to request privacy protection during the domain name registration process. When such a request is made by a new non-individual Registrant, its private information will be kept private until the request for privacy protection is processed. If CIRA rejects their request, their information will continue to be private for 5 business days, before it is published. This allows them to contact their registrar to see if they have any other options available to them, such as Registrar privacy services.


• Current non-individual Registrants whose private information is displayed in the WHOIS are able to request privacy protection by logging onto the Registrant Interface. If a request is made by a current non-individual Registrant, its private information remains displayed in the WHOIS and is only made private if CIRA approves the request for privacy protection.


• Anyone will be able send a message to a Registrant whose personal information is kept private by using the online 'Message delivery' form. The online form will be available at https://registrants.cira.ca/message/delivery/en

3. Testing period for the recent WHOIS changes
The testing period for the WHOIS functionality that has been added since January 2008, is between May 14, 2008 (Wednesday) and June 9, 2008. Use the following URLs for testing purposes:

Registrar web interface:

https://rarweb.test.cira.ca/rars

Function calls:

https://rarxml.test.cira.ca/rars

https://ro.test.cira.ca/rwhois

https://ro.test.cira.ca/rwhois.token

https://ro.test.cira.ca/rinfo

Non-SSL token support:

http://ro.test.cira.ca/rwhois.token

http://ro.test.cira.ca/rinfo

Public WHOIS service:

http://whois.test.cira.ca/public

Port 43 WHOIS service:

whois.test.cira.ca

Registrant web interface:

http://registrants.test.cira.ca/user

Please note that the SSL certificates used for these sites are self-signed (not signed by an accredited certificate authority), and as such will produce a warning in most web browsers.

The database supporting the testing site is a duplicate of the production database as of January 2, 2008. Registrar account passwords and roles will appear as they did in production on that date.

4. Amendments to legal documents
The following amended legal documents are currently available at http://www.cira.ca/registrars-documents/:

Amendments related to the WHOIS service:

• CIRA Privacy Policy, version 1.4” (See entire document)


• “Registrar Agreement, version 1.8” (Sections 4.2 (c) (d), 8.4 (m)(n)(o), 11.3)


• “Registrant Agreement, version 1.8” (Sections 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, 6.16 (d), 7.4 (2)(m) (n)(o), 11.5)


• “General Registration Rules, version 3.10” (Sections 2.9, 10.4)


• “Manual Change of Administrative Contact Policy, Rules and Procedures, version 1.7” (Sections 1(g), 1 (h), 20, Schedule “A”, Part B1 and Part B2 of Shedule “A”)


• “Registration Information Access Rules and Procedures, version 1.2” (Introduction, paragraph 1, paragraph 5, paragraph 6(b))


• “CIRA Domain Name Dispute Resolution Rules, version 1.3” (Sections 3.2(d), 4.3, 11.1)


• “CIRA Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy, version 1.2” (Section 2.4)


• “Legal Notice, version 1.3” (Section entitled Acceptable use of the WHOIS)

Other amendments to the legal documents:

- “Registrant Agreement, version 1.8” (Section 10.1(2))

- “Registrar Agreement, version 1.8” (Sections 4.2(l), 13.1)

· CIRA has made this change to allow it to make required changes to its policies to reflect changes in its business, in a timely fashion. Under the current Agreement, non-material and even insignificant changes could not be implemented without a long lead time. CIRA will of course continue to respect the needs of its Registrars and Registrants. To that end, CIRA’s “Policy Development Process (PDP)” will continue to apply.

5. Technical documentation for the new WHOIS
The updated versions of the technical documents are currently available on the test version of the Registrar web interface at https://rarweb.test.cira.ca/rars and on the CIRA public site at http://www.cira.ca/registrars-documents/. Information about the WHOIS technical documentation that was published in January are supplied for your convenience since some of the page numbers may have changed.

- Web Interface Guide, version 2.0
The following changes have been made to the document for the Q2 release of the 2008 WHOIS:

• The topic Registrant privacy protection for CIRA WHOIS has been edited. See “Registrant privacy protection for CIRA WHOIS” on page 11


• The definition of the 'Privacy off date' has been edited. See Table 34: “Complete, private WHOIS information” on page 60


• The communication sequence information for the 'Add WHOIS privacy' process has been edited. See Table 60: “Communication sequences for the 'Add WHOIS privacy' process” on page 139


• The communication sequence information for the 'Remove WHOIS privacy' process has been edited. See Table 73: “Communication sequences for the 'Remove WHOIS privacy' process type” on page 145

The following changes were made to the document for the Q1 release of the 2008 WHOIS:

• The date for the database supporting the “Sandbox for Quarterly Release” has been changed to January 2, 2008. Registrar accounts and passwords in the test environment will appear as they did in production on that date. See “Sandbox for Quarterly Release” on page 10


• The URL https://rarweb.test.cira.ca/rars was added to the sub-topic “Sandbox for Quarterly Release”. See “Sandbox for Quarterly Release” on page 10


• The topic “CIRA WHOIS” has been deleted


• A new topic “CIRA public WHOIS” has been added. See “CIRA public WHOIS” on page 11v
• A new topic “Searching Registrar WHOIS” has been added. See “Searching Registrar WHOIS” on page 11


• A new topic “Registrant privacy protection for CIRA WHOIS” on page 11 has been added


• A link for 'Search Registrar WHOIS' has been added to the “Quick Links” topic. See “Quick links” on page 13


• The sub-topic “WHOIS output and personal information” has been deleted


• The topic “Search Registrar WHOIS” on page 59 has been added


• The topic “Understanding Registrar WHOIS results” has been added. See “Understanding the Search Registrar WHOIS results” on page 60


• The topic “Understanding the Registrar WHOIS list of similar domain names” on page 65 has been added


• The description for the field “Phone” has been edited throughout the document to indicate that the Registrant’s telephone information will only appear on the CIRA WHOIS for Registrants whose personal information is not protected by WHOIS privacy. The following tables reflect this change
  • Table 3: “Entering the Administrative Contact information” on page 19
  
  
  • Table 4: “Entering the technical contact information” on page 21
  
  
  • Table 23: “Entering the Administrative Contact information” on page 34
  
  
  • Table 24: “Entering the technical contact information” on page 35
  
  
  • Table 37: “Updating the Administrative Contact information” on page 71
  
  
  • Table 38: “Updating technical contact information” on page 72
  
  
  • Table 40: “MCAC request: new Administrative Contact information” on page 77
  
  
  • Table 44: “SCAC request: new Administrative Contact information” on page 85
  
  


• The sample of the status message of the CIRA WHOIS output for TBR domain names has been edited. See “TBR domain name registration” on page 46


• Minor edits have been made to the following topic: “Registration statuses that are indicated in the Search Registrar WHOIS output” on page 65


• The permitted menu item WHOIS has been deleted from the Access public information role for Registrar users. The permitted menu item Search Registrar WHOIS has been added in its place. See “Access public information role” on page 164


• Reference to the public CIRA WHOIS has been deleted from the following tables:
  • Table 40: “MCAC request: new Administrative Contact information” on page 77
  
  
  • Table 44: “SCAC request: new Administrative Contact information” on page 85
  
  


• Two new sub-topics have been added to the topic “Understanding communication sequences for processes”. See “Add WHOIS privacy” on page 139 and “Remove WHOIS privacy” on page 145

- Technical Reference Manual, version 2.1
The following change has been made to the document for the Q2 release of the 2008 WHOIS:

• The definition of the 'Privacy off date' has been edited. See Table 79: “RAR_WHOIS response parameters” on page 103


• The following changes were made to the document for the Q1 release of the 2008 WHOIS:


• The caution in the ADD_MCAC topic has been edited to indicate that you must use the RAR_WHOIS function to find the current email address of the Registrant. See “ADD_MCAC” on page 12


• A new, optional, parameter 'doms_all_rars' has been added to the LIST_DOM function. It allows you to request a list of domain names that you manage for the Registrant or you can request a list of all of the domain name held by a Registrant, regardless of if you are the Registrar of record or not. See “LIST_DOM” on page 67


• A new function that can be used to create a WHOIS look-up directory on your website has been added. It only displays information that is not protected by WHOIS privacy. See “PUBLIC_WHOIS” on page 81


• The “WHOIS” function has been deleted. It has been replaced by the function RAR_WHOIS. The RAR_WHOIS function is identical to the former WHOIS function except that it has three new parameters (two of which are not always returned). Also, the formatting of the error message output has been changed. See “RAR_WHOIS” on page 101


• A caution has been added to the RENEW_DOM topic that indicates the proper use of the outputs from using the 'DO_WHOIS' parameter. See “RENEW_DOM” on page 128


• A caution has been added to the UDP_DOM_INFO topic that indicated the proper use of the outputs from using the 'DO_WHOIS' parameter. See “UPD_DOM_INFO” on page 160


• The WHOIS function has been deleted from the list of functions that use the valid values parameter table WHOIS status. The functions RAR_WHOIS and PUBLIC_WHOIS have been added to the list. Also, two new valid values have been added to the table of valid values for WHOIS status: CDN and MDN. See “WHOIS status” on page 200


• Two new processes AWP (Add WHOIS privacy) and RWP (Remove WHOIS privacy) have been added to the Process name abbreviation table. See Table 140: “Process name abbreviations” on page 201


• The following error messages have been edited for clarity: 01114, 01043, 02001, 01116, 01113, 01115. The following new error messages have been added: 10100, 10101, 10102, 10103, 10104, 10105, 10106, 10107, 10108, 10109, 10110, 10111, 10112 and 09123. See “Error codes” on page 207

- CIRA Programming Guide, version 2.1
The following change has been made to the document for the Q2 release of the 2008 WHOIS:

• The topic Registrant privacy protection for CIRA WHOIS has been edited. See “Registrant access to CIRA” on page 20

The following changes were made to the document for the Q1 release of the 2008 WHOIS:

• The date for the database supporting the “Sandbox for Quarterly Release” has been changed to January 2, 2008. Registrar accounts and passwords in the test environment will appear as they did in production on that date. See “Registrar test environments” on page 19


• The URL http://whois.cira.ca/public has been added to the list of interfaces that can be accessed from IP addresses that are not on your list of Registrar network blocks. See “Registrar network blocks” on page 8


• The topic “Interfaces supported by CIRA” has been edited to indicate that the “dual screen” WHOIS output from the 'Search Registrar WHOIS' request (that displays both complete and limited WHOIS data, side by side) is only available on the Registrar Web Interface. It also provides a reference to the ability for Registrars to access complete WHOIS data using the RAR_WHOIS function on the socket-based web interface. See “Interfaces supported by CIRA” on page 10


• The “WHOIS” function has been deleted from the list of calls that can be sent to http://ro.cira.ca/rwhois.token. The RAR_WHOIS and PUBLIC_WHOIS functions have been added to the list. See “Using tokens” on page 12


• The format of the token strings has changed. Also, any former token security issues have been fixed. See “How to use a token” on page 13


• The format for the output when recovering lost tokens has changed. The list of numbered <rec(n)> tags now begins at <rec1> instead of <rec2>. Also the sample of the token string has been edited. See “Recovering lost tokens” on page 14


• A new topic has been added that provides an overview of CIRA WHOIS privacy. See “Registrant privacy protection for CIRA WHOIS” on page 21


• A new topic has been added that indicate how to access the private Registrant WHOIS data that is not available on public CIRA WHOIS. See “How to access private Registrant WHOIS data” on page 21


• A new topic has been added that displays the new port 43 WHOIS output for dot-ca domain names. See “CIRA WHOIS on Port 43” on page 22

vThe topic “Understanding Registrar roles” has been edited to indicate that the new function calls RAR_WHOIS and PUBLIC_WHOIS are available to all Registrar users. See “The PUBLIC_RAR role” on page 24

• A cross-reference to more information about WHOIS privacy was added to the topic “Creating Registrant profiles (ENREG_RANT)”. Also, the note about 'ctc_phone' data being displayed on the CIRA WHOIS was edited to say that it may or may not be displayed, depending on the Registrant’s privacy settings. See “Creating Registrant profiles (ENREG_RANT)” on page 34


• The sample of the status message of the CIRA WHOIS output for TBR domain names has been edited. See “TBR domain name registration” on page 41


• A cross-reference to more information about WHOIS privacy was added to the topic “Updating contact information”. Also, the note about 'ctc_phone data' being displayed on the CIRA WHOIS was edited to say that it may or may not be displayed, depending on the Registrant’s privacy settings. See “Updating contact information” on page 54


• Reference to the public CIRA WHOIS was deleted from the topic “Understanding the SCAC approval process”. See “Understanding the SCAC approval process” on page 59


• A bug in the system email Message #122 has been fixed. This email is sent as part of the Registrant to Registrant transfer process

- Glossary – Glossaire, version 1.7
The following change has been made to the document for the Q2 release of the 2008 WHOIS:

• The terms 'WHOIS' (English) / 'WHOIS' (French) have been edited. See “WHOIS” on page 55 (English) and “WHOIS” on page 55 (French)

6. No release of municipal domain names
At this time, CIRA is not releasing any municipal domain names in accordance with the "Registration of Municipal Names Policy, Rules and Procedures".

Refer to the document "Registration of Municipal Names Policy, Rules and Procedures (Version 1.4 - Effective Date: June 13, 2006), located at http://www.cira.ca/registrars-documents/ for more information.

7. Additional maintenance period
During the recent conference call (April 30), it was announced that a lengthy maintenance window was being planned around the May 17 date. The maintenance will proceed, but the length of time needed will be significantly shorter than first anticipated and it will not happen on May 17. CIRA will announce the date and time of this maintenance within the next couple of weeks.

Please write to regsupport@cira.ca if you need additional information or have any questions about this advisory.

The next quarterly release Registrar advisory, for Q3 2008, will be published on August 7, 2008.