From the CEO’s Desk
There’s nothing like setting the dates for the end of year change freeze (22 Dec – 10 Jan) to make you sit up and notice the year is almost over! At least most of us are out of lockdown in time to do some seasonal shopping. On our shopping list is a brand new out of band network, and a few extra switches to accommodate all the member growth we keep seeing! The big Facebook outage recently demonstrated just how important your out of band access is when the network is broken, and that out of band access is vital for ensuring you can get access to sort whatever problem the network or our own humanity causes. Our existing out of band network is old and barely serviceable, so it’s definitely time for a replacement.
Speaking of replacements, we are currently advertising for a new Policy Officer and Network Engineer, both of whom are off to new roles. If you know of anyone that might be suitable, drop us a line – they need to be totally fluent in internet acronym-speak, albeit somewhat different ones for each role, and be truly dedicated to serving our industry and making the Internet better.
We’ll also be recruiting soon for an Advisory Council. The council will comprise members/member representatives and is to assist us in forming our positions on the various regulatory and policy issues and will meet about four times per year to give us that guidance. We’d love to hear from your policy nerds or even business people that have an interest in sensible rules within our industry. If we can pick the brains of a few of you, our submissions and representation will be even better!
A huge congratulations to the team and to NZIX with the launch of WLG-IX. With two initial points of presence, this is a great expansion to the existing services across New Zealand. The POPs are in Xtreme and Spark’s Featherstone sites so nicely accessible to many of the Wellington service infrastructure.
You may have noticed that auDA has finally launched the timetable for direct registrations in the .au namespace. This means you will be able to register your own domain names as a second level domain directly under .au. If you already have some_example.com.au then you will have priority in getting some_example.au as long as no-one else has some_example.org.au etc. Most countries have direct registrations already and it didn’t break their internet when it was introduced, but members should be aware that this change is coming, and it might mean extra effort in your DNS or customer support. Or you might want to try a whole new marketing approach with your shiny new short url. Check the auDA website for the full rules and the timetable.
Last but not least, I must extend my thanks to member Ciphertel for stepping into the breach when we couldn’t get to QV1 for the power outage this month. It is brilliant to see the value our members bring. I just hope the coffee in the new café is good enough to justify the hassle.
As ever – please feel free to get in touch to give me your views on any of the topics in this month’s newsletter.
Narelle Clark
