The incident, which arose due to new registration procedures that shorten grace periods given to domain name owners to reclaim their names effective last July, threatened to cost Ozemail, Anzwers' owner, one of its prime URLs.
OzEmail failed to renew the main URL associated with the search engine, anzwers.com.au, for 10 days after its expired
The incident left the site unreachable to non-OzEmail subscribers via that Web address for at least four days, and OzEmail with just four more days to act before it risked losing the URL altogether.
Seven days after the URL expired, the domain name was automatically deleted from .au zone file which is maintained by auDA authorities and used to update Domain Name Servers (which provide Web browser applications with information about how to retrieve Web sites) across the globe.
Before the information was deleted Web surfers that entered the URL into their browser's address bar should have been redirected to a variation of the address on Yahoo Australia's domain. However, 24 hours after the information had been deleted most Web surfers not using OzEmail's DNS were left unable to access the site via the URL.
However had the URL been sold without the ISP being informed of the site' disappearance, the access problems would have by comparison seemed a relatively minor annoyance.
According to new auDA regulations, expired domain names enter a "delete pending" status for 14 days. After 14 days, the expired domain name can be dropped "randomly" within the next seven days and becomes available for registration.
OzEmail claims that even in the unlikely event that nobody contacted it about the problem, it would have been notified "immediately" by its domain registrar, Melbourne IT, had the name been deleted from the domain register.
However Melbourne IT said that it was not typical to warn a registrant about deletions after they've occurred. Bruce Tonkin, the registrar's spokesperson, said Melbourne IT customers are sent warning letters reminding registrants to renew their domain names up to 90 days prior to their domain's expiry date.
"I think they [registrants] typically get given a series of notices and on those notices the consequences of not renewing are explained," said Tonkin.
ZDNet Australia and others contacted OzEmail and Yahoo staff to inform them that the URL didn't appear to be working on 15 November. The problem was not rectified until the following Monday when the ISP discovered the URL for the site needed renewing.
Tonkin said the incident serves as a reminder to domain owners to take more care to ensure their URLs don't expire.
OzEmail has laid the blame for the situation at the feet of an "administrative error".
David Bathur, OzEmail spokesperson, said it didn't renew the domain with Melbourne IT, as it believed it would be updated automatically.
The fact that OzEmail staff could still reach the search engine using the URL while those using alternative ISPs outside its domain could not, appears to have contributed their failure to act when the domain expired.
Staff at Yahoo and OzEmail who spoke to ZDNet Australia about the search engines apparent disappearance last Friday seemed confused about the problem as they said they were still able reach the site via the Anzwers URL.
OzEmail is also playing down the impact of the mistake on Internet users.
OzEmail said that few Domain Name Servers (DNS) update frequently enough to have caught the change in auDA's zone file hence limiting the number of users affected by the problem.
When asked how many Internet users would have been using a DNS that updated quickly enough to be affected in the period Bathur answered "very few, I imagine".
Tonkin said it takes 24 hours for the bulk of Domain Name Servers to update their records. According to Tonkin the vast majority of global DNSes update in a 48 hour period.
OzEmail has since corrected its statements concerning the frequency with which Domain Name Servers update but continues to claim that the problem had a limited impact.
It said it would only have affected those who had cleared their browser's Web cache after the URL expired.
The Anzwers URL had been redirecting Web users to Australian Yahoo domain ever since it took over management of the search engine's content in June 2001. OzEmail claims that information would have been available to browser Web caches after the URL expired and was deleted.
"The site was still operating and available at http://au.anzwers.yahoo.com/, so if this is what was cached in your browser, or if this is what a link was pointing to - there would have been no issue," said Bathur.
OzEmail also said it would makes to assume that the majority of Anzwers users are OzEmail subscribers who wouldn't have experienced the problem.
OzEmail has apologised for any inconvenience that the situation caused.
News in context
Visit this page for ZDNet Australia's comprehensive coverage of the domain names issue.
