II. STATEMENT OF CAPABILITIES OF THE APPLICANT AND CONTRACTED SERVICE PROVIDERS

C11. As stated in the Criteria for Assessing Proposals, "ICANN's first priority is to preserve the stability of the Internet" and "ICANN will place significant emphasis on the demonstrated ability of the applicant or a member of the proposing team to operate a TLD registry of significant scale in a manner that provides affordable services with a high degree of service responsiveness and reliability." This section of the .org Proposal offers the applicant the opportunity to demonstrate its ability to operate the .org registry in that manner.

Throughout this document, operation of the .org registry, including providing all associated Registry Services, as defined in subsection 1.16 of the model .org Registry Agreement, is referred to as the "Registry Function".

C12. State whether the applicant intends to perform all aspects of the Registry Function, or whether the applicant intends to outsource some or all aspects of the Registry Function to other entities that will provide services or facilities under contract with the applicant. If any portion(s) of the services or facilities will be provided by another entity under contract, please describe which portion(s), state the time period during which they will be provided under contract, and identify what entity will be providing the services or facilities.

The .Org Foundation has put in place a model that fully addresses the requirements of the .org registry proposal and the criteria for assessment determined by ICANN. The .Org Foundation, as a nonprofit foundation, will be established as the successor .org registry operator and eNom, Inc., an accredited ICANN registrar, will be the for-profit registry service provider, contracted by the registry operator to perform the technical implementation of the registry operator's policy.

To help ensure broader competition for registry services, and to remove a built-in advantage gained by the initial registry provider, the Foundation stipulates that the contracted registry service provider is prohibited from providing any registry services other than those specified in the services table listed in item C13 below. For example the contracted registry service provider will not provide email forwarding, await list service, or special fat whois notification services. Additionally, The .Org Foundation contemplates no other domain name related registry services, other than those outlined in this proposal, at this time. Using mactching funds, the Foundation does plan to offer philanthropic services and other non-domain name related services for noncommercial organizations.

If in the future, The .Org Foundation innovates other domain name related registry services or requires a registry service related to the technical operation of the registry, an RFP process will be used to select the additional service provider in cooperation with the existing service provider to provide the new service to the registry operator. This will allow innovation and improvements without building-in a competitive advantage to the initial registry service provider. Compliance with future related IETF BCPs and RFCs, and ICANN policies will be maintained with no additional cost for the duration of the contract. The initial registry service provider will provide the following registry services, and only these services, on behalf of The .Org Foundation with equivalent access to all ICANN registrars, who, as currently, will be the only paying customers to the registry operator.

If this proposal is accepted, to help ensure fair access and to remove a potential conflict of interest, eNom, Inc., the registry service provider, will immediately refrain from making further registrations in the .org registry. It will maintain existing .org names it sponsors until they can be transferred to another ICANN accredited registrar. After this transition is completed, the registry service provider will become de-accredited as an .org registrar.

Also, to ensure competition and quality service at the lowest cost offered by The .Org Foundation the registry service provider contract will be re-bid every two years beginning on the third year anniversary of the delegation. The initial registry service provider, will not be prohibited from being allowed to compete to perform similar services for other registries.

The .Org Foundation in conjunction with eNom, Inc., the registry service provider, while maintaining or increasing competition at the registry and registrar levels, will provide the same stable registry technical service that is currently provided for .org registrars, registrants, and the Internet user community, with the following improvements:

• Transition to EPP from RRP, providing many benefits, the biggest one may well be authorization codes to facilitate transfers, the basis of competition.
• Better handling of deleted names, with the same fairness and cost as re-registering deleted names today.
• Real-time zone file updates for faster domain provisioning and so that zone file errors can be detected and corrected faster.
• Free transfers. To help encourage competition among registrars and freer choice for registrants, after the transition to EPP, transfers will be free, and will not add a year. (This complies with RFC 2832.).
• Self-categorization. The .org registry will be open and unrestricted to any registrant, just as it is today: non-profit, for-profit, organization, individual, etc. Registrants can continue to decide if the .org TLD is appropriate for them and there will continue to be no eligibility requirements, though we propose the following new feature: After the EPP transition is complete, registrants will be given the opportunity to declare whether or not they are a commercial for-profit, or a non-profit organization, an individual, etc. and if they are non-profit, are they a grant making, or grant receiving (or both) organization. This non-required information will be displayed in the whois output, gives an added benefit for non profit organization to select the .org TLD, reinforces the original purpose for the .org TLD, allows grant-making .orgs to connect with grant receiving organizations via a registry (or 3rd party) supplied search, and will allow the registry to disburse excess and matching funds/resources back to non-profit organizations that the registry primarily serves. The information will not be used to settle disputes amongst registrants.
• EPP polling mechanism. To provide a voice for the .org registrants, the EPP interface will be extended to allow each registered domain to cast a vote; in much the same way as whois information is modified today. Since transfers are free, registrants who wish to vote can easily choose which registrar to utilize that provides the voting capability to registrants. Validation of registrant identity by the registrar is the same as for changing name servers for a domain, for example. Votes will be published in the whois output for the domain. The foundation board will get a report, for example, showing how many domains who declare themselves to be a non-profit organization, voted "for" the resolution.

C13. Identify by name each entity other than the applicant that will provide any of the following:

• all services and facilities used to perform the Registry Function;
• any portion of the services and facilities used to perform the Registry Function accounting for 10% or more of overall costs of the Registry Function; or
• any portion of any of the services and facilities used to perform the following parts of the Registry Function accounting for 25% or more of overall costs of the part: database operation, zone file generation, zone file distribution and publication, billing and collection, data escrow and backup, customer (registrar) support, and Whois service.

The .Org Foundation will contract with eNom, Inc. as the .org registry service provider.

C13.1. The full legal name, principal address, telephone and fax numbers, and e-mail address of the entity, and the URL of its principal world wide web site.

The contact information for eNom, Inc. is:
Paul Stahura, CEO
eNom, Inc.
16771 NE 80th Street, Suite #100
Redmond, WA 98052 USA
Phone: 425.883.8860
Fax:425.883.3553
Email: stahura@enom.com

C13.2. A general description of the entity's business and other activities.

eNom, Inc. is an accredited ICANN registrar and registers names in a number of top level domains. ENom is a privately held company that provides DNS, email, web and other domain name related services. eNom is not participating in any other registry (such as Afilias), and is not currently performing any TLD registry functions. It is a new entrant to the competition amongst registry service providers. See item C15.2 for more information.

C13.3. The entity's type (e.g., corporation, partnership, etc.) and law (e.g., Denmark) under which it is organized. Please state whether the entity is for-profit or non-profit. If it is non-profit, please provide a detailed statement of its mission.

eNom, Inc. is a privately held company registered in the United States.

C13.4. Dun & Bradstreet D-U-N-S Number (if any) of the entity.

eNom, Inc.'s Dun and Bradstreet number is: 12-938-2086.

C13.5. The number of employees currently employed by the entity.

eNom, Inc. employee count is: 30.

C13.6. The entity's total revenue (in US dollars) in the last-ended fiscal year.

eNom's total revenue for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2001 was $5 million. Projected revenue for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2002 is $15 million.

C14. For each entity identified in item C13, please state the scope and terms of the contract under which the facilities or services will be provided and attach documentary evidence that the entity has committed to enter into that contract.

The contractual agreement between The .Org Foundation and eNom, Inc. regarding the duties and accountabilities of eNom, Inc. as the registry service provider for the .org TLD are included in Appendix C. Enom, Inc. will provide the service listed below.

Service	Fee to Registrar
Registrations (including adding years to a name, or "renewing" a name) including IDN names	$4.95/name/year
Re-registrations (registration of deleted names using dialy mini-sunrises)	$4.95/name/year
Registrar to registrar transfers	none
Transition from RRP to EPP with extensions	none
Real-time zone file updates/DNS	none
Fat-registry whois database service similar to other EPP registries	none
Compliance with future IETF RFCs, BCPs, and ICANN policy	none
Billing, 24/7 customer service, maintenance of the registry database, bulk access to zone files, name server registrations, registry data escrow, and other registry functions that are currently provided.	none

C15. Describe in detail the abilities of the applicant and the entities identified in item C13 to operate a TLD registry of significant scale in a manner that provides affordable services with a high degree of service responsiveness and reliability. Your response should give specifics, including significant past or present achievements and activities of the applicant and the entities identified in item C13 that demonstrate the described abilities. It should also include information about key technical personnel (qualifications and experience), size of technical workforce, and access to systems development tools.

C15.1 Capabilities of the Registry Operator - The .Org Foundation

The .Org Foundation is committed to providing affordable services with a high degree of service responsiveness and reliability. To that end The .Org Foundation has assembled a high-powered experienced team of people to ensure that the operation of the .org registry is done thoroughly and professionally.

Our Executive Director, MR. T. DRAYTON, is the entrepreneur behind seven successful start-ups including Count Me In, a technology company that enables its customer organizations to enhance and increase their program offering and their relationship with their participants, members, volunteers and donors.

Prior to founding Count Me In, Terry co-founded HomeGrocer.com. He served as president and director of HomeGrocer, from its inception in the fall of 1996 to its sale in June of 2000 to Webvan.com for $1.1B. Terry was also HomeGrocer's CEO through September of 1999. Instrumental in the development of customer proposition and the business model, Terry's primary responsibilities were: strategic vision, company culture, recruiting, team development and strategic partners, in addition to securing the funding necessary to achieve the business plan. His leadership fostered many significant milestones, including the creation of a truly customer-centric company, the development of a robust, scalable technology infrastructure, the building of an extremely strong retail brand, and two generations of operating facilities. From commercial launch on May 28, 1998, HomeGrocer grew to more than 1500 staff operating across the nation from 8 facilities, and delivering from more than 400 specialized delivery vehicles. More than 100,000 customers used the service with sales in 2000 (stand-alone) of approximately $150 million, making HomeGrocer the largest Internet grocer in the world. During this time, Terry and company raised more than $440 million in capital, including an IPO lead managed by Morgan Stanley for $280 million in March of 2000. Terry recruited outstanding partners for the venture, including legendary Venture Capitalists Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, Hummer Winblad, Jim Barksdale, Liberty Media and Madrona, as well as Amazon.com and Martha Stewart.

Terry is often referred to as a "serial entrepreneur." After completing Bachelor of Commerce and MBA degrees, Terry spent three years working in the venture capital and investment-banking arena before starting his first new business in 1986. In 1999, Terry won the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year award for the Pacific Northwest, and now serves on the panel of judges. Greatly enjoying both the art and science of start-ups, Terry is a founding member of the University of Washington's Center for Technology Entrepreneurship and teaches a course on creating new ventures. An enthusiastic and passionate individual, he believes that companies can achieve their visions by using business models that put the customer first, executed by talented, hard-working people using solid technology.

Our Operations Director, MELESSA ROGERS, is a seasoned nonprofit management professional. She has extensive operations experience in a variety of nonprofit environments. She was Director of Operations for RESULTS, Inc., a leading hunger and poverty grassroots advocacy organization headquartered in Washington, D.C. with affiliates in several countries and a focus on both global and domestic hunger issues. For several years she managed The Graduate Management Program at Antioch University Seattle.

Ms. Rogers has a deep commitment to the financial viability of nonprofits. To that end, she launched and managed a software company for five years that provided fully integrated software developed solely for nonprofits. She had over fifty clients ranging in size from small start-up volunteer based endeavors to large multi-million dollar state-subsidized agencies. She has an Associates degree in Computer Science and worked in the corporate sector as a systems analyst, project manager, and software developer for more than ten years.

She has worked on numerous local, national, and international fundraising endeavors and worked with Raising More Money, one of the leading fundraising consulting groups in the country. She coordinated a 35-member delegation that attended the U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China in 1995 and also conducted a factfinding mission to Bangladesh that focused on the effect of microcredit programs on poverty reduction and economic self-sufficiency. She serves on the board of a local microcredit program in Seattle and is a graduate of Antioch University with a degree in Communications.

Our Information Technology Director, ROBERT DUFFY Mr. Robert Duffy led the technology initiatives that launched three Internet based companies over the last five years including Count Me In, an online registration and registration management hosted service, that services the nonprofit community. Mr. Duffy served as the Chief Technology Officer of HomeGrocer.com, a fully integrated Internet supermarket shopping and delivery service. At HomeGrocer.com he built and led a team of over 200 technology resources that developed and operated a fully integrated eCommerce and automated order fulfillment systems that handled over 500,000 transactions per day. Mr. Duffy has also led the effort to launch OutcomePro, a powerful web service based online application for managing the numerous small-scale projects and initiatives that are pivotal to every organization's success.

Mr. Duffy has over nineteen years of development, consultant and management experience within a variety of industries including the nonprofit sector. He was Principal Consultant for ASI and Best Consulting. He also served as a Senior Manager with Andersen Consulting, co-founding Andersen's Workstation Technology Group. In these positions, Mr. Duffy headed pioneering efforts to implement advanced technology to automate business operations and redefine business functions across a variety of industries. He has led business development and consulting activities at AT&T Wireless, Boeing, Microsoft, Sprint, Sysco and Weyerhaeuser. He also worked with Singer-Link on NASA's Space Shuttle astronaut training simulators. Mr. Duffy has a B.S. in Applied Mathematics and Operations Research from the University of Tulsa.

Our Development Director, SHEILA RICHARDSON is a market development and public relations consultant. She was formerly the Business Development Officer at Solthree Software, Director of Marketing and Business Development at Entegra Consulting and has worked with several software, technology and digital media companies. She was co-founder and President of Richardson-Hurshell Public Relations that was merged with McKnight & Co. Marketing Communications. Her extensive experience includes business development, marketing and public relations management for a wide range of companies in the technology, travel/hospitality and professional services industries.
As a Washington State delegate to the White House Conference on Small Business, she has represented economic development issues in the National arena. She has served on numerous nonprofit boards, is a past president of the board of the 911Media Arts Center and was the founding development director of the Digital Media Alliance, now part of the WSA.

Ms. Richardson's background also includes Director of Marketing, Powder Magazine. She was an original investor in Powder and is an Internet publishing pioneer involved with several entrepreneurial ventures. Richardson was named to Who's Who In the West for business and organizational innovation and leadership. She is a Seattle native and a Phi Beta Kappa, Cum Laude graduate of the University of Washington.

C15.2 Capabilities of the Registry Service Provider - eNom, Inc.
Initial registry service provider selected

The selected initial registry service provider is eNom, Inc. eNom, a for-profit company, is an ICANN accredited registrar. Formed in Washington State in the USA in 1997 as literally a garage start-up, its initial service offering was to provide name server services to registrants, and it does so to this day. eNom began its participation as a registrar when the company applied for inclusion in the initial registrar test bed. Although eNom was not accepted for the test bed, it did become one of the first registrars accredited after the test bed in 1999 when the registrar industry was fully opened to competition by ICANN. eNom is now one of the largest registrars with over 1 million names sponsored across a number of TLDs. eNom has consistently increased its market share amongst registrars, especially in recent months, by performing from between ten to twenty percent of all net new registrations in the most popular TLDs each month worldwide.

Value: Excellent service at an excellent price.
As a registrar eNom is known predominantly for two characteristics:

1. Domain name services (many innovative): excellent quality and breadth.
2. Delivering those services at low prices for volume customers.

As a registry service provider eNom will be committed to continue to provide superior service and value for the registrar customers of the registry operator, and ultimately for the .org registrants and the Internet community.

For as low as $0.95 over registry cost, eNom profitably provides all of the following:

1. A domain name registration in all the most popular TLDs, or renewal, re-registration of a deleted name, or transfer.
2. Name server service with real-time zone updates.
3. Web and port-43 Whois service with customizable output.
4. Sub-domain creation for up to 100 hosts per domain.
5. URL redirection.
6. Customizable parking page.
7. Domain name management, with sub-account creation.
8. Online transaction reports.
9. Email address creation and forwarding for 100 email addresses for each domain.
10. 10 page website with web-based website builder tool.
11. Name-your-phone where users can name their text-messaging enabled device to enable others to send messages to it by name.
12. Online global changes, for example, to change the name servers for 1000's of names at the same time.
13. Email and phone tech support.
14. API interface ability (equivalent to an EPP-type interface).
15. And more.

Compared to the .org registry, this service offering list is more extensive than the offering list for the registry. For example, currently the registry is a "thin" registry, whereas eNom collects "thick" registry data, and the registry does not provide URL redirection or email forwarding services, as other examples.

So, if the registry service is not as complex or extensive as the registrar service, why doesn't eNom charge a 95-cent per name registry service fee to the Foundation (the registry operator)? One reason is that eNom's average price is $3.30 over cost, not $0.95, which means others, who are performing lower volume registrations, such as eNom's retail customers, are "subsidizing" the ones doing a larger volume. As a comparison, eNom's proposed price to the registry operator is $3.33 per name-year.

The other important differences are, for example:

1. Customer support. A registry would require 24x7 customer support, whereas eNom currently only provides support during business hours.
2. Robustness. A registry would require less disruption in registration service than eNom's current resellers allow. Needless to say, DNS service is 100% uptime in either case; though the registry has stricter round-trip time and packet loss requirements (see cross-network nameserver performance requirements), and a larger capacity requirement.
3. Transition costs. The .org registry would transition from RRP to EPP during the contract period, necessitating additional expenditures to accomplish this. Plus additional EPP extensions are proposed.
4. Compliance. Future ICANN policy and IETF specifications would need to be implemented for the registry.
5. Scale. eNom's current systems, DNS etc., would need to be scaled to provide service for previously registered names for which eNom has not received funds.

As the registrar of record of over 1 million domains, eNom:

• Registers, transfers, and renews over 100,000 new names per month.
• Has one of the largest authoritative DNS constellations outside of a gTLD.
• Maintains perhaps the largest real-time zone update name server constellation, which has been in production for over 2 years.
• Performs over 40 million DNS lookups per day, with peaks to 150 million.
• Has the capacity to perform 300 million DNS lookups per day.

At the same time, eNom remains both profitable and one of the lowest cost registrars in the industry, and therefore one of the most efficient.

Business stability:
eNom is profitable and has been for about a year and is projected to remain so. The company has experienced eleven consecutive quarters of revenue growth; revenue for the end of this fiscal year (it ends Sept 30) will be over $15 million. It has also consistently and steadily grown the breadth of its domain name related service offerings and the number of names under management.

Reseller oriented
Although eNom provides a retail domain name registration site for retail customers, most of its business is performed through its more than 2,000 active resellers who use eNom's API. Other real-time reseller and domain name related statistics are published at its site at: http://www.enom.com/statistics.asp.

Potential conflict eliminated:
If this proposal is accepted, to help ensure fair access and to remove a potential conflict of interest, eNom will immediately refrain from making further registrations in the .org registry. It will maintain exiting .org names it sponsors until they can be transferred to another ICANN accredited registrar. After this transition is completed, it will become de-accredited as a .org registrar. eNom is not part of the .org foundation, for example sharing common board members with the foundation. Its relationship with the .org foundation is solely to provide excellent registry technical service.

Protocol: support, function, and adapt
eNom has extensive experience in complying with Internet protocols. It has built software that comply with the protocol specifications for:

• DNS
• POP3 and SMTP
• RRP
• EPP

This section will briefly describe these implementations concentrating on their architecture because this architecture was chosen so that the services can be easily modified to support, comply and adapt to future protocols. Testing of the software to make sure it complies with protocols is also discussed.

DNS
eNom, and we believe, Nominum, UltraDNS, and Verisign, no longer use BIND for nameserver software. "Having everyone run the same name server is a screaming invitation for bad things to happen,'' says David Conrad, CTO at Nominum, a DNS service provider (http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2002/133242_06-10-2002.html). We agree and apply the idea to the other software running on the name server hardware, too, including the OS and the database software. A variety of running software, as long as they all comply with the same protocol standards, makes the entire domain name system more robust and less susceptible to a flaw in any one instance of the protocol's implementation.

eNom's real-time DNS was written from scratch in C++; and is fully compliant with the following RFCs and BCPs:

• RFC1034 - Domain Names - Concepts and Facilities
• RFC1035 - Domain Names - Implementation And Specification
• RFC2870 - Root Name Server Operational Requirements
• BCP0040 - Root Name Server Operational Requirements
• RFC1101 - DNS Encoding of Network Names and Other Types
• RFC2181 - Clarifications to the DNS Specification
• RFC2182 - Selection and Operation of Secondary DNS Servers

It was built with a modular "plug-in" architecture that lends itself to adoption of modifications to the RFCs above. The plug-in architecture is described in the following diagram:

The DLL accepts incoming DNS queries. The query is then passed to the DNS service, where it is parsed and run through a series of resolution plug-ins. A plug-in may add to the answer, authority, or additional section, or modify the answer header (as each is specified in the protocol) for a query. Each resolution plug-in may answer the query completely and stop further plug-in processing.

Aside from manual testing for the nameserver software's compliance with RFCs, a test application was developed to determine performance and accuracy of the eNom DNS service. The test application used a 48-hour capture of millions of live queries sent to a server running BIND 9.1, and the server's response. The test application then flooded the eNom DNS service with the same queries, recording the responses. A byte level compare between the answers given by the two servers was used to determine that the eNom DNS service did, in fact, give the expected responses when under a load.

POP3 and SMTP

The POP3 service is implemented via a custom application. The application is written in C++ and runs as a Windows NT service. The service incorporates both a POP3 and SMTP server. Each domain name must have an MX record pointing to the POP3 server in order to receive mail.

SMTP: The SMTP server implements RFC2821 (Simple Mail Transport Protocol). SMTP is used only for incoming messages destined for local mailboxes. No relaying to outside hosts is allowed. Upon receipt of inbound mail, the destination user is verified against current configured users and domains in a SQL Server database. The mail is then directed to the appropriate file folder on the POP3 server to be stored until the user retrieves the message via the POP3 protocol. If this was a new user, the required message drop folder will be created at this point.

The SMTP portion of the service was run through various tests in house by pointing various mail clients (i.e. Outlook Express, Netscape Mail, etc) at the server and sending messages to check for compatibility with existing software and protocols. The server was then tested by relaying mail through other MTAs on the Internet running various types of software (i.e. sendmail, exchange, etc) that are in wide use. The software was then stress tested by a test app running on multiple clients. The software can successfully handle many times the load we currently experience or expect in the near future.

Modifying the command lookup table and adding the appropriate functions to implement the new commands can easily extend the SMTP service.

POP3: The POP3 server implements RFC1939 (Post Office Protocol version 3). Once a message is routed to the user's mailbox via SMTP (see above), the user can retrieve their mail via a POP3 client. The client's username and password is checked against configured users and domains in a SQL Server database. If the authentication is successful, the user is logged in and a list of messages waiting in their folder is retrieved. If this was a new user, the required message drop folder will be created at this point. When the client logs off and disconnects, any messages marked as deleted are removed from the user's directory.

To make sure it complies with the protocols, the POP3 portion of the service was run through various tests by pointing various mail clients (i.e. Outlook Express, Netscape Mail, etc) at the server and retrieving mail. In addition, web based services that offer POP mail checking (i.e. Hotmail) were tested against the server as well.

Modifying the command lookup table and adding the appropriate functions to implement the new commands can easily extend the POP3 service.

eNom Email Forwarding Service

The eNom Email Forwarding Service (eForward) is implemented via an extension of Microsoft's SMTP service included with IIS. The application is written in C++ as a COM object and is registered with IIS SMTP as an event sink. The SMTP service calls the event sink when specific SMTP commands are received, and the sink implements additional functionality. Each domain must have an MX record pointing to the email-forwarding servers in order to use email-forwarding functionality.

Upon receipt of an email message, the eForward service looks up the destination email address in a SQL Server database. If the address is valid, the database will return the "forward-to" address. The event sink simply modifies the email routing to send it to the "forward-to" address, and lets IIS SMTP process it. IIS will then deliver the email to the appropriate destination mail server, addressed to the "forward-to" address. No modification of the email body is performed.

Multiple email forwarding servers are used to distribute load, as well as provide redundancy should one server fail and/or Internet connectivity at that site go down. All servers are specified in a domain's zone file with identical MX preferences, so all servers receive approximately the same load.

The eForward event sink is designed to keep the server compliant with RFC2821 (SMTP and ESMTP). Modifications and/or extensions to the email forwarding service simply require additional functions added to the event sink object to implement the desired SMTP events.

eNom has also developed its own protocols (though not proposed as IETF standards), for example its reseller API, that is in use in production by over 2,000 active resellers.

RRP/EPP

All connections to various registries run through eNom's RPM - the Registry Proxy Manager. RPM maintains a pool of connections to each registry in one functionally (across a number of machines in various locations) central point. This system provides a common interface to backend systems, and interfaces with the various registries through the use of protocol specific plugins. A registry requiring RRP will be configured with the RFC2832 compliant RRP plugin DLL, while a registry requiring EPP will be configured with the RFC1465 compliant EPP plugin DLL. Protocol changes require no modification to core backend code. The protocol specific plugin simply needs to be modified or updated as required, or a new plugin may be developed to handle the specifics of a new protocol.

eNom is committed to support and to quickly adapt to any new or existing registry or DNS related IETF protocol without cost to the registry operator.

Technical Workforce and System Development tools
The size of the technical workforce is 17 full-time permanent employees. eNom is located in an area of the United States with abundant, available, local technical personnel who are experienced in the technologies employed to build the system, and therefore, eNom can scale its technical workforce easily.

System development tools include: Microsoft Visual Studio, NuMega Programmer's Suite, MS SQL Query Analyzer, etc. Languages include C++, VB, VB Script (ASP), Java Script, Transaction SQL, etc. Debugging tools include WINDBG, CDB, Bounds Checker, True Time. MS Visual Source Safe is used for source code control. See Section III "Technical Plan" for more information.

Additionally, Microsoft has committed its support for this proposal. Their letter of support is included in Appendix F.

eNom will take advantage of committed support from Microsoft's Scalability and Performance Lab as well as the 24-hour support from Microsoft's SQL Server Competency Center. See http://www.microsoft.com/support/partner/maps/Default.htm for more details.

Current performance and capacity comparison

Item	For eNom	For the .org registry
Number of registrations	Over 1 million (increasing)	Approx. 2.7 million (decreasing) As an additional comparison, Afilias has registered about 900,000 (increasing) names in the .info TLD to date.
Average number of new registrations per month since Jan 1 2002 (counts: new, renewals, and transfers-in; does not count: deletions and transfers-out)	New 71,294 Renewals 20,831 Transfers in 25,149 total 117,274	New 75,000 Renewals 50,000 Transfers in 0 total 125,000
DNS lookups per day, current actual	40 million, with peaks of 150 million (on 1.6 million host records) while simultaneously performing 85,000 real-time zone updates per day	Of 6.5 billion total for the CNO root zones, we estimate 6% are for .org, or about a 390 million per day average.
DNS lookups per day, current capacity	At least 300 million, while simultaneously performing 1 million real-time zone updates per day	Unknown
DNS zone change average latency	3 seconds	24 hours
Commands per day (number RRP or EPP sent to all registries for eNom, number RRP received for .org registry)	Check 1.1 million Others 0.4 million Total 1.5 million	Check 5.5 million Others 2.0 million Total 7.5 million These numbers are estimated by multiplying eNom's by five. After the transition, the number of check commands will likely be reduced at the registry by the introduction of an orderly re-registration process
Peak RRP/EPP transactions in an hour	5 million "Check" commands, performed back when more connections were allowed for each registrar, across a few registrar's connections	Unknown
Approx. customer service calls handled per week	750-1000	Unknown
Approx. customer service emails handled per week	1100	Unknown
Emails forwarded per day on average	530,000	0
Active customers using API	2,000 resellers	90 Registrars

By reliably servicing over 1 million registrations, which is more than all but about four or five TLD registries manage, eNom has demonstrated that it has, on-hand, the necessary technologies, knowledge, expertise, and other capabilities to perform as the registry services provider in a reliable and stable manner.

As demonstrated by its current capacity and architecture (see Section III), it is able to scale in order to provide the same or better stability and service currently offered by the existing registry, and can provide even better service beyond the current registry offering (EPP, real-time DNS, free transfers, orderly re-registration service, etc) for a lower price than what is offered by the registry today. See Section III of this proposal for additional technical information.


eNom, Inc. Personnel
Below are the qualifications and experience of some of the key eNom personnel.

Paul Stahura
CEO

Paul, the founder of eNom, Inc. has served as the company's President since 1997. Paul started the company in his garage in late 1997, grew the company during 1998-2000, sold it in 2000 and then bought the company back in early 2002. Mr. Stahura has 10 years of entrepreneurial business experience as well as 17 years of technical experience designing, implementing and commercializing complex software development projects in management and in team member positions.

Prior to eNom Paul co-founded Syllogistics, LLC and was a Principal at this information technology consulting company. He was instrumental in its growth from 5 to 55 employees and from no office to offices in three states. Paul sold the company to WebVision in June 2000. While at Syllogistics, Paul managed groups of consultants that performed IT development services at a number of web startups and other companies.

Paul is an inventor and has been granted one patent, with another recently filed. He holds both Master of Science and Bachelor of Science degrees in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University.


James L. Beaver
VP Operations

As one of the co-owners, Jim brings 16 years of management and software development experience to eNom. His background in IT for manufacturing, telecommunications and biomedicine allows Jim to be effective in providing the best available solutions for eNom and its customers. Jim is responsible for the productions systems, finance/accounting, IS, legal and human resources.

In addition to being the principal consultant in the Northwest Region, Jim co-managed the operations and staff of the Redmond Development Center for Webvision, a web development, hosting, and management company, from 2000 to 2001. Jim then joined the eNom team to help grow and finance the company, as it was still a wholly owned subsidiary of Webvision.

From 1996 to 2000, Jim was a Principal of Syllogistics, LLC, a nationwide professional services firm specializing in distributed, integrated business solutions. Jim co-founded the company, helped establish the west-coast office, and was instrumental in the growth the company.

While at Syllogistics, Jim, on a 2-year contract for Boeing Corporation, was a Lead Architect of Application Integration for the largest distributed-IT project that any company was undertaking at the time. The project was a business process reengineering effort, involving hundreds of developers, which integrated over 400 disparate systems worldwide and migrated from over 1,000 legacy systems. The migration involved:

• 500 gigabytes of airplane production data.
• 700 million records.
• 900,000 parts.
• 31,000 users.

See http://www.boeing.com/commercial/initiatives/dcacmrm/dcac_implementation.html for more information.

Using this IT project management, architecture, integration and migration experience, combined with Jim's intimate familiarity with architecture for registries, registrars, DNS and eNom's systems, Jim is aptly suited to lead the effort to migrate from the legacy .org registry to eNom as the successor registry service provider.

Before Syllogistics, Jim grew Vetronics, Inc, a small veterinary electronic product company, from startup phase to profitability and an eventual sale. He managed technical development, production, sales, operations and international customer support.

His initial focus was on robot simulation, real-time data acquisition and shop floor control. This eventually allowed him to be a key member in establishing a hi-tech manufacturing plant for a Fortune 500 company. Jim holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University.


Matthew Stearn
Vice President of Business Development with oversight of Customer Service, and Policy

Mr. Stearn joined eNom in March of 2000, as it's first employee. Primary responsibilities include all aspects of the customer experience.

He manages the Business Development and Marketing department. The department is the engine behind eNom's growing network of resellers and retail customers. The reseller network has propelled eNom into the 6th position among ICANN accredited registrars with over a million active domains. eNom is recognized month after month as one of the industry's fastest growing registrars.

In his oversight of Customer Service he heads a department that services the needs of over 35,000 retail domain holders and over 5,000 resellers, with 2,000 of these resellers using eNom's API. Mr. Stearn sets policy and service levels enjoyed by eNom's customers. He is responsible for transforming customer feedback into market innovations, products, and tools.

Mr. Stearn began his career at the corporate headquarters of Pacific Life Corp. As Director of Business Development and Marketing, he grew the small group health division from $1 million in annual sales to a $20 million per year profit center and industry leader.

In 1993, he founded Pacific Coast Properties, a real estate investment and management company in Los Angeles. The PCP portfolio includes residential and commercial investment properties in excess of $100 million dollars. He sold PCP in 1996 but remains an advisor.

In 1997, he opened the Northwest regional office of employeeservice.com, an out-sourced human resource application service provider headquartered in San Francisco. He was instrumental in securing partnerships with employeeservice.com's largest customers, and was recognized for managing employeeservice.com's most profitable region.

Mr. Stearn has been a consultant to Boeing, the McDonalds Corp and Zones International and still consults to PCP and Calamaris, a Washington technology start-up.

He graduated from the University of California at Santa Barbara with a degree in Political Science.


Chris Cowherd
Chief Architect

Since writing his first program over 22 years ago, Chris has gained considerable experience in systems architecture, software development, database design, and Internet technologies. He brings this experience, drive, and a deep commitment to "make it work" to eNom.

He contributes world-class experience gained from participating in the development and evaluation of the source code for such well-known products as Internet Explorer and Windows2000, as well as earlier operating systems for Microsoft. Prior to Microsoft, he was also the lead developer for Advanced Semiconductor, Inc providing engineering software.

After retiring from Microsoft, Chris joined eNom as the leader of the "deep-technology division" that has been responsible for development of key eNom services such as DNS, registry communications, POP, kernel level debugging. Chris also provides key technical leadership across all technical aspects of eNom.


Sean Muller
Senior Database Architect and Program Manager

Sean has been with eNom for over two years and has been responsible for the development of all backend systems and processes. He has over 5 years experience in developing scalable, high-availability database systems and over 5 years experience in business development and project management. Sean is a senior level database architect providing technical expertise in scoping, designing, modeling and leading the implementations of enterprise database solutions.

He has extensive knowledge in business intelligence, performance tuning, decision support systems, data migration and database replication and scaling, and is an expert in Transact SQL, MS SQL Server 2000. He can think broadly across components and has exceptionally strong communication and organizational skills.

Sean has led the development of many of eNom's mission critical system and processes such as the transfer process, renewal system, accounting, order processing, private label service, and other business processes. Sean manages a team that provides the security, backup and recovery mechanisms for all database instances.

Prior to joining eNom Sean was co-founder and CEO of EduClick, Inc. At EduClick, Sean was responsible for developing all aspects of a web-based purchasing software and a distribution system of educational products to the school market. On the business side, he oversaw fund-raising, strategic planning and partnerships, vendor relationship, and operations. On the technical side, Sean oversaw the development of an automated warehouse distribution system and patent-pending online purchasing software.

Sean received his B.S. degree in Biology from the University of Washington. He is currently enrolled in the Executive / Technology Management MBA program at the University of Washington with expected graduation of June 2003.