III.1Registry Operator’s Technical Capabilities (RFP Section D15.1)

JVTeam offers comprehensive technical capabilities in the areas of registry operation, software development, database management, and standards development. These abilities are founded on expansive experience in all areas related to technical service provision for a critical public resource. JVTeam is the best choice to design, deliver and maintain the next generation domain name registry.

A new top level domain registry must be capable of improving the reliability and effectiveness of domain name registration, contribute responsibly to a competitive environment, and preserve the Internet’s continuing stability. In addition the registry must bring the technical know-how to specify and design a solution that ensures the continuing evolution of the domain name system.

There are many complexities within the DNS and Registry environment that require a detailed understanding of the issues and their implications on the technical solution.  For instance, a minor change in policy can have far-reaching implications on how a database needs to behave in order to ensure the integrity and efficiency of domain name registration and administration. Management of a TLD registry also brings with it an immense responsibility in the secure administration of personal and business contact information. It is essential for the success of the current program that the registry operator understand the entire operating environment and has the experience and ability to deliver a solution which benefits all relevant stake holders. JVTeam has the technical capabilities to deliver that solution.

JVTeam Technical Capabilities

Shared, mission-critical, registry infrastructure services are our sole corporate focus.  We specialize in developing and operating unique support services for the Internet and communications industries, using innovative solutions, operated to the highest of standards and practices, as a trusted third party in an impeccably evenhanded fashion.

NeuStar serves as the North American Numbering Plan Administrator (NANPA).  It operates the telephone numbering registry for the North American Numbering Plan as a public numbering resource.  NeuStar is also the Local Number Portability Administrator (LNPA) for the US and Canada, operating the telephone number routing registry (called the NPAC SMS) for North America.  The integrity and accuracy of this service is essential for virtually every call placed to North America.  With the proliferation of communications service providers, competition, and convergence, it believes that the industry will benefit from shared, trusted, infrastructure and clearinghouse services that will facilitate the interoperability of service providers.

The Number Portability Administration Center Service Management System (NPAC SMS) hosts this routing registry, which is used to track network and call routing, SS7 signaling, and billing information for all telephone numbers in North America.  Please see ftp://ftp.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-foster-e164-gstn-np-01.txt for a description of number portability in the GSTN, as well as the NPAC’s specific role in North America.  We provide, directly or indirectly, highly secure host-to-host administrative transaction interfaces to this registry for all 5,000 service providers in North America.  These service providers’ operational support systems (OSSs) require the highest availability standards of our service in order for them to manage and operate their networks.

Consequently, we operate this service to 29 monthly service level requirements (SLRs), including availability (99.99%), transaction response time, throughput, and help desk telephone call answer times, and pay financial penalties for missing any of these levels.  Between our data centers, we provide realtime database replication and server failover/recovery functions, and fully redundant enterprise networking facilities.  Our data centers are owned and operated by NeuStar, staffed 7x24 with our own network operations center personnel, and are physically secured via both card key and palm print readers.

NeuStar operates its services, including the NPAC SMS, off of a unique world-class IP network and server infrastructure, housed in our own diverse, redundant, data centers.  We operate a highly secure, quad redundant, enterprise IP network, application servers, and support servers (e.g. DNS, NNTP, RADIUS/SecurID) providing dedicated access directly to over 300 communication service providers, and indirectly to all 5,000 in North America.  Sized at approximately 900 Mbps of aggregate capacity, our IP network provides diverse BGP-4 routed links to external service provider operational support systems (OSSs) and network elements.   In addition, we support over 1,000 dial-up or secured internet users from our customers, to access our web-based interfaces for our services.  In case of failure of a service provider’s OSS, they may log directly into our web-based NPAC GUI to provide critical network management functions.  All dial-up users (internal or external) must use a NeuStar-issued SecurID for strong authentication.

Each data center has a completely redundant, hardened, switched VLAN backbone, and redundant set of network access servers and firewalls.  All critical application and database servers are dual-homed to each of these site-based backbones, using a virtual-IP address assigned to each host which is reachable through either NIC port on that host through either backbone.  Each NIC port and back-bone link is assigned a 4-IP address subnet to ensure quick detection of NIC/link/port failures and maintain full reachability of that server without impacting established internal or external communication associations.  Certain key services (such as NPAC SMS application and database servers) are implemented using over 64 Lucent (Stratus) hardware fault tolerant HP-UX servers.

The NeuStar network is structured into a series of security rings, to provide for firewall isolation of traffic from various sources and applications.  All internet reachable systems are placed onto one of a series of bastion subnets (bracketed by firewalls) to ensure security of the core network in the unlikely case of a server breach on the bastion network.  All external data network links employ extensive BGP-4 route filtering to ensure only appropriate internal routes are advertised, and that routes to other service providers networks are not advertised or reachable.

While extensively using standard, well known, protocols (e.g. BGP-4) we also employ certain relatively unusual protocols, such as CMIP over IP, which are common in OSS applications.  The NPAC service employs this protocol to provide a distributed, bi-directional, object oriented application framework for interacting with the registry.  Strong authentication is employed for accepting CMIP associations from service provider OSSs, with an extensive administrative key management infrastructure to support.   Each service provider system is assigned a list of keys, each at least 660 bits in length.  Each and every CMIP provisioning transaction is individually signed to provide the highest in authentication and non-repudiation given the potential operational and financial impacts one service provider could cause another.  Given the millions of transaction we process every day, we’ve employed extensive hardware-based crypto accelerators to ensure the highest performance levels without sacrificing security.  Given the industry critical nature of the NPAC service, standardizing access to it from service provider OSSs was essential.  In 1996 we developed the CMIP interface standards for the NPAC and subsequently placed them in the public domain.  They are now managed under the auspices of a specific industry standards body (the NANC LNPA WG) to whom we provide on-going secretarial support for maintenance of the standards.

These levels of standards are highly relevant and appropriate for a DNS registry provider, given the criticality of ICANN’s new TLD initiatives, and the vital need to do so while maintaining stability of the internet.  They exemplify our fluency with both the technical, operational, security, and overall business standards with which industry-critical services of this kind must be provided for the interest of all industry stakeholders.

Melbourne IT has managed the Australian com.au registration service since 1996, and since June 1999 has operated as one of the first ICANN accredited TLD Registrars.  Due to this extensive experience, Melbourne IT has been in a unique position to observe many possible operational models, including thin and fat registries, different registrant authentication methods, and protocol design requirements and techniques for success in the market.

Our business model is to predominantly work through an extensive network of over 500 channel partners.  Because we have made a commitment not to compete with our partner network, we have not deployed functionality such as ISP access and Web hosting.

Melbourne IT’s advanced TLD registration system uses a high performance and highly scalable 3-tier architecture.  The tiers include a web/protocol server tier, application server tier and back-end server tier (database, billing, credit card payments, registry server, etc).  The registration system has been developed in Java with a custom-built application server and associated infrastructure.  Security has been a priority throughout both the software architecture and network design.

The infrastructure has built-in redundancy with multiple servers in the web/protocol, application, and database tiers and thus has been engineered for high fault tolerance.  In addition, network devices such as routers, firewalls and load-balancers have been deployed in a fully redundant configuration.  Each tier is configured as a cluster, with failed servers automatically removed from the cluster.  Sun Sparc/Solaris SMP machines have been used throughout the environment, with plenty of headroom for future growth.  Melbourne IT also has four years experience maintaining and generating zonefiles, and has developed a second-generation, scalable Whois server architecture.

Melbourne IT has service level agreements with channel partners guaranteeing over 99% availability, minimum transaction response times, throughput, and help desk telephone call answer times.  If these service levels are not met, there are financial penalties.

Because we operate through a channel partner network, we have experience providing a number of integration protocols including HTTP Post, XML and email templates, using security mechanisms like SSL and PGP.  Melbourne IT’s research group has developed two XML domain name registration protocols, and an XML based domain name generation protocol has been deployed.

Melbourne IT brings considerable technical and domain expertise to JVTeam.

JVTeam has been founded on the strengths of the expansive technical experience of two of the world’s leaders in the provision of registry services for critical public resources. The scope of this experience includes design and development of secure, real-time resource management systems, the implementation of high transaction, high availability database solutions, the design and management of transcontinental IP networks and the effective and timely delivery of technical solutions within highly regulated environments. All of this combined makes JVTeam the best choice in developing and delivering a responsible and stable solution for the next generation TLD registry.

The table below provides an overview of the defined technical capabilities for a TLD registry operator together with a demonstration of how JVTeam’s technical capabilities, backed up by real world experience and success, meets or exceeds those requirements. T

Registry Operator’s Technical Capability Requirement	JVTeam’s Technical capability
Release Management	·         NeuStar: 7 major NPAC / SMS software releases over 4 years, incorporating over 300 change orders requested by the industry, costing over $70M ·         Melbourne IT: 5 major releases of leading domain name registration system.  Formalized and documented process for release management as required by channel partner network. ·         NeuStar: Numerous other industry service systems (FCC LNP Cost Recovery/Billing, NANPA, CARE, Identibase)
Configuration Management	·         NeuStar manages an infrastructure of 100+ large servers, 2000 data circuits, including Lucent hardware-based fault tolerant servers, numerous 3rd party middleware providers, 7 major NPAC/SMS application s/w releases, across 4 sites ·         Melbourne IT manages an infrastructure of 30+ servers across three data centers and has a dedicated production support team with documented configuration management processes.  Infrastructure supports separate development, internal test, external (partner) test, and production environments.
Change Management	·         NeuStar: processing 300 industry change orders in 4 years, across 7 major s/w releases.  Established an industry standards group as focal point for coordinate NPAC enhancements (change orders).
Network Engineering	·         NeuStar: deployed completely redundantly, IP-based, highly diverse and secure private WAN and LAN interconnecting 300 competing service providers with the NPAC SMS, covering 2000 data circuits, total of 900 Mbps capacity, each with BGP-4 routing for fast recovery and routing security, integrated with enterprise wide frame relay and high-capacity inter-site ATM links. ·         Melbourne IT designed, developed and manages a geographically disparate and highly secure IP network spanning 2 continents and 3 data centers.
Applications Development	·         NeuStar developed the NPAC SMS system and applications software, and associated industry number portability administration and interface standards, and testing services. ·         MIT developed the com.au domain name registration system. ·         MIT developed leading edge system and API for TLD registrar interface incorporating HTTP POST, XML, email and web interfaces.  System supports TLD and ccTLD registrations, domain name monitoring services and digital certificates provision.
Software Engineering	·         NeuStar engineers and manages the NPAC SMS to process tens of millions of transactions per day from 4,000 service provider’s operational support systems against a multi-terabyte database, to strict availability, performance, and response time requirements, managing the routing for all telephone numbers in North America, upon which virtually every called dialed relies. ·         Melbourne IT engineers and maintains domain name registration systems with over one million domain names under management.  The system is capable of over one million transactions per day and supports a network of over 500 channel partners.
User Interface Design	·         NeuStar developed web interfaces for NPAC SMS (used by 3,000 service provider craft personnel), NANPA (used by 1,000 service provider network administrators), FCC LNP Cost Recovery (used by 4,000 service provider billing personnel), and 4 other informational web sites. ·         Melbourne IT currently manages multiple real time web sites for domain name registration and administration and channel partner access. ·         Melbourne IT: Developed internal administration interfaces.
Standards Development	·         NeuStar: Proposed, established, and provide technical and secretarial support to the LNPA WG at NANC (oversees number portability administration standards); active in IETF (NeuStar chair of ENUM WG), ITU, ETSI, INC, TMF, and OBF. ·         Melbourne IT currently has a representative on MINC board of directors.
Large Database Design and Administration	·         NeuStar: NPAC/SMS routing registry database for all telephone numbers in North America: multi-terabyte, realtime, inter-site synchronous replication, automated failover, online incremental backup, recently converted from RDBMS to ODBMS for scalability, performance, and online administration (on-line schema evolution).  Have large dedicated staff of DBAs to administer. ·         Melbourne IT maintains large databases supporting over 1 million domain names under management.  Database transactions are replicated in real time to a secondary data center in Australia. ·         .com, net, org registration and Whois databases capable of accepting as many as 8 million new registrations per month.
Network Security	·         NeuStar and Melbourne IT: Employ dual-firewall bastion network structure to insulate external access facilities and servers from internal secure enterprise network, all external and internal dial-up access via physical security token authentication; NeuStar uses extensive BGP-4 route and packet filtering to isolate 300 directly interconnect service providers from each other and secure internal routes
Requirements Management	·         NeuStar: System requirements development is a mandatory phase in each software project lifecycle.  Use Doors tool for requirement management change control and automation.  Develop industry requirements documents for services under contract (NPAC, NANPA, etc.), including function requirements, method and practices documents, reports, and test plan documents. ·         Melbourne IT follows a formal software development process promoting best practices, including business requirement management, and functional specification documentation.
Web Development and Administration	·         NeuStar developed web interfaces for NPAC SMS (used by 3,000 service provider craft personnel), NANPA (used by 1,000 service provider network administrators), FCC LNP Cost Recovery (used by 4,000 service provider billing personnel), and 4 other informational web sites, inhouse. ·         Melbourne IT developed web interfaces for domain name registration channel partners; supporting registration maintenance, reporting and account management functions.
System Analysis	·         Stemming from its NPAC SMS work, as well as NANPA, Number Pooling Administration, CARE, Identibase, NeuStar has extensive systems analysis expertise used to develop industry requirements and operational methods and practices documents used extensively throughout all of its services ·         Melbourne IT’s software engineering group has 4 years systems analysis and design experience from working on numerous projects.
System Testing	·         NeuStar: On the NPAC SMS, extensive internal system testing is conducted in its captive development testbed environment, which includes automated regression testing platforms and load/stress/availability testing (6 systems); in addition, NeuStar offers interoperability testing to enable  OSS system developers to test their system’s compliance to NeuStar developed (now managed by open industry stds group) CMIP interface specification for interface to NPAC SMS; captive semi-production turn-up testbed environment for pre-production release testing with the live industry OSSs; and inter-service provider testbed for testing operational interactions between and amongst service provider OSSs. ·         Melbourne IT uses CASE tools to facilitate automated mapping between functional requirements and test cases.  In addition, the CASE tools automate unit, system, stress, regression and acceptance testing.
IT Project Management	·         NeuStar has a dedicated Program Management group, with an official enterprise-wide NeuStar Program Management (NPM) process; a leading published expert on software development lifecycles; and 4 years of success developing huge software releases on time to strict quality standards for industry critical online functions.
Contractual Service Level Agreements (SLA) Delivery	·         NeuStar: NPAC SMS has 29 contractual SLR (service level requirements) reported monthly, with associated financial penalties. ·         Melbourne IT has SLAs with several major Channel Partners covering limited system down time and system performance measures.  Financial penalties apply if the requirements documented in the service level agreement are not adhered to.
Call Center Operation with SLAs	·         NeuStar: 4 year track record in help desk operation in compliance with contractual SLAs (e.g. 10 second answer time, <1% abandon rate). ·         Melbourne IT: Currently have stringent SLAs with several large channel partners guaranteeing phone response time.
System Integration	·         NeuStar integrated and operates over 16 discrete subsystems as part of its service infrastructure, e.g. call center systems, trouble ticketing, workflow management, billing, customer care, network management, security administration and monitoring, database management and administration. ·         Melbourne IT has experience integrating call center, CRM, accounts, trouble ticketing, document tracking, system monitoring and database management systems into its registration infrastructure. ·         Melbourne IT has experience providing many different system level interfaces to our network of more than 500 channel partners, providing options to channel partners performing systems integration to our registration systems.
Support 7x24x365 Call Center	·         NeuStar operates several 7x24 help desks for external users (e.g. NPAC SMS), and one for internal staff. ·         Melbourne IT provides support in 10 languages in its multi-lingual call center. Provides 24 x 7 x 365 support to customers across 4 continents.
Fully Redundant Infrastructure Configuration	·         NeuStar’s existing service infrastructure, supporting NPAC SMS, NPAC, CARE, and Identibase. ·         Melbourne IT has multiple redundant data centers.  Each data center is configured using a redundant architecture with fully redundant firewall, router, load-balancer, and server tiers.
Disaster Recovery Plan / Failover Procedures	·         NeuStar and Melbourne IT have extensive disaster recovery plans, failover procedures, methods and practices documents.  NeuStar conducts mandatory compliance reporting.
Customer Neutrality and Evenhandedness	·         NeuStar: Corporate equity ownership and indebtedness restrictions (5%), corporate charter to provide all services on non-discriminatory basis to all potential customers, can not offer competing services as service providers or enter into conflict of interest; Code of Conduct sworn by all staff, quarterly compliance audits conducted by E&Y reported publicly.
Geographically Dispersed Data Center Management	·         NeuStar: Production operations distributed over 2 major hardened production centers ·         Melbourne IT: Production system distributed over 2 geographic locations (California USA and Melbourne, Australia).
Robust, Secure, 3-Tier Registry System Creation	·         NeuStar: NPAC SMS ·         Melbourne IT: SRS registry interface system
Technical Training	·         NeuStar: provide extensive training to 3,000 service provider personnel on regular basis
Network and Facility Security Provisioning	·         NeuStar: physical biometric facility security, fulltime monitoring, strong physical security token authentication for dial-up access; crypto key list administration for service provider OSSs; individual signed transactions, using 660+ bit keys. ·         Melbourne IT: network and facility security configured at granular level, strong physical security token authentication for dial-up access; SSL session for channel network, x.509 certificates used connecting to registry.
Zone File Generation	·         NeuStar: Generate master routing database “zone” files for service provider systems in addition to providing transactional updates. ·         Melbourne IT: Generated and maintained the com.au zone file since 1996.
Whois Service Provision	·         Melbourne IT: Second generation TLD Registrar Whois database with currently more than 800,000 entries.
Data Escrow / Backup	·         NeuStar and Melbourne IT: currently provide regular escrow of key NPAC and Registration system databases for industry survivability.
Systems Monitoring	·         NeuStar and Melbourne IT: extensive 7x24 system, network, and application monitoring
Systems Protocol Development	·         NeuStar: developed the NPAC SMS IIS interface, based on CMIP over IP, a bi-directional object-oriented management protocol for OSS access to the NPAC SMS.  Processes database change service orders through strict business process, and provides distributed, realtime, transactional database update processes.  Placed in public domain, managed by the LNPA WG of the NANC. ·         Melbourne IT: developed system level registration protocol for com.au, TLD and ccTLD registration system.  Research group produced two XML based domain name registration protocols.  Currently XML based domain name generation protocol is in production and supporting millions of requests per day.
Trouble Tracking System	·         NeuStar: employ custom integrated system using AutoAnswer ·         Melbourne IT: using high volume case tracking system, Talisma supporting more than 100,000 end users.
CRM System	·         Melbourne IT: currently using 2 CRM systems, Sales Logix and Talisma.
Document Tracking System	·         Melbourne IT uses corporate document tracking and searching system.  Allows company history to be stored in a non-modifiable database.  Allows for document searching.

Key Technical Personnel

JVTeam’s past success in delivering effective, innovative technical solutions has only been made possible by a team of dedicated and capable people. The knowledge and ability of those people will be leveraged to ensure the successful design, development and ongoing management of the JVTeam Registry.    

Key personnel occupy important roles on the JVTeam management team. A brief synopsis of each of our key technical personnel is provided as follows:

Mark Foster, Chief Technology Officer, NeuStar. Mark is responsible for strategic technology initiatives, standards, program management, and the design, development and operation of NeuStar's complex network and systems infrastructure. A widely recognized subject matter expert, Tom pioneered number portability in the industry in 1994-1995 and subsequently led the development of NeuStar's Number Portability Administration Center in 1996. He has over 20 years of entrepreneurial experience in developing innovative solutions to industry problems, with inventions such as a voice-controlled intelligent network service node platform, a new computer language for developing telephone switching systems software, and the first SS7-to-IP signaling gateway (1990).

Tom McGarry, Chief Technical Industry Liaison, NeuStar. Tom is responsible for standards development and support and strategic technology initiatives within NeuStar. Tom has over 17 years experience in engineering leading edge communications technologies, including wireless networking, C7 and systems integration.

George Guo, Director Technical Operations, NeuStar. George is responsible for all technical operations within NeuStar. This includes deploying, testing and operating complex registry systems used for the North American Numbering Plan. In addition Mr Guo is responsible for internal and external customer support.

Bruce Tonkin, Chief Technology Officer, Melbourne IT. Bruce is responsible for ensuring that Melbourne IT is kept at the forefront of technology through liaison with leading research organisations in Australia and overseas, and for evaluating the technology in potential investments. Bruce has wide experience in advanced computing and communications, both in Australia and overseas at AT&T Bell Laboratories in USA.  He has advised organisations in industries such as building and construction, natural resource management, telemedicine, automotive, film and television, and education in the application of new telecommunications technologies.

Guye Engel, General Manager, Production and Development, Melbourne IT. Guye has responsibility for the production operation and technical support of the com.au as well as the .com, .net and .org domain name registration systems. In addition, Guye is responsible for overseeing the development of all new systems and functionality for all lines of business with Melbourne IT. Prior to joining Melbourne IT, Guye had 17 years with the IT division of a leading Australian bank. Throughout his career, Guye has also led a variety of development support and critical application support teams in which he has gained an in depth knowledge of IT disciplines and methodologies.

Size of Technical Workforce

Proposal Sections II.1.6-II.1.7 provides a description of the entire JVTeam staff.  Due to the technical complexity of the TLD registry service the technical staff is a significant part of the JVTeam.   The JVTeam has a highly focused eCommerce workforce with the right skill sets to develop and deploy a TLD registry operation.

NeuStar—Since its founding in 1996, originally as an independent business unit within Lockheed Martin, NeuStar has grown to nearly 200 employees located in offices in Washington, DC (Corporate headquarters), Sterling, VA. Chicago, IL, Concord, CA, Seattle, WA, and London, UK. 

Melbourne IT—Established in 1996 as a new subsidiary of the University of Melbourne, Melbourne IT has grown to become a publicly listed global company, staffing in excess of 170 personnel around the world. Melbourne IT is headquartered in Melbourne, Australia, with offices in Spain and the United States of America. Melbourne IT is committed to undertaking leading research and development in Information Technology, the Internet, and Telecommunications. Working closely with the University of Melbourne and international research groups, government, industry and major corporations, Melbourne IT seeks to maintain its position as a world class research facility for emerging internet technologies.

Access to System Development Tools

JVTeam has software and Web development groups with specialties in software architecture design, requirements specification, object-oriented analysis and object oriented design, system engineering, software development, information system security, documentation, integration, and testing using the following systems development tools.

Development Tool	Purpose
Rational Rose	Full feature object oriented analysis design CASE tool with support for a wide variety of target databases.
Continuous	Fully integrated configuration and change management system facilitating full lifecycle system management processes
Doors	Requirements and documentation management tool
Ilog	Inference engine for developing complex business transaction rules
Purify	Used to detect memory leakage in applications software, leading to system stability problems
Quantify	Captures software performance metrics to facilitate performance engineering and tuning
CORBA, RMI	Used for remote object activation and access
C++, JAVA, Delphi, SQL	Development languages selected for the target hardware and software platforms
Java Servlets, Java Server Pages, Cold Fusion, CGI-script,  XML & XSL	Web development tools for building web sites and thin client applications for distribution to a wide range of users.

Significant Past Achievements

North American Numbering Plan Administration (NANPA):  NeuStar operates the telephone numbering registry for the North American Numbering Plan as a public numbering resource, serving communications providers throughout the United States and Canada. NeuStar became the NANPA on October 9, 1997. The Federal Communications Commission, the United States National Regulatory Authority (NRA) with regard to telephone numbering issues, and the North American Numbering Council, an industry group advising the NRA on numbering issues, selected NeuStar in an open procurement process.

Number Portability Administration Center (NPAC): In April 1996, NeuStar was chosen to serve as the Local Number Portability Administrator (LNPA). In that role, NeuStar operates the call and signaling/routing registry for North America – the Number Portability Administration center (NPAC).  The NPAC coordinates the porting of telephone numbers between carriers and downloads routing information to carriers' local Service Management Systems (SMS), which in turn updates local routing databases. 

In an open standards process NeuStar developed the specifications which defined and documented the functions of the NPAC and the interface to the NPAC, the Functional Requirements Spec and the Interoperable Interface Spec respectively.  NeuStar then developed, deployed, tested and turned-up the NPAC service.  The NPAC processes tens of millions of transactions per day, serving more than 4,000 service providers in North America. Visit the NPAC web site to find out about the regions it covers, recent changes, planned enhancements and more.

Pooling Administration (PA): As proven by NeuStar, pooling, distributing numbers in increments less than that of a full office code (i.e., 1,000 rather than 10,000, in the NANP), has the potential to extend the North American Numbering Plan's life well into the next century. NeuStar has been the Pooling Administrator for over two years for all U.S. trials. With a knowledgeable, experienced staff, NeuStar has implemented pooling in 10 states within 24 different numbering plan areas to date.  NeuStar worked with the telecommunications industry to develop the initial Pooling Administration guidelines in New York and Illinois in 1997-1998. The current guidelines are based upon those findings and have spurred the demand for pooling implementation in several other states. NeuStar continues to work with the Industry Numbering Council (INC) to suggest and modify changes to current pooling guidelines, based upon NeuStar's actual experiences with pooling trials.

com.au registration and maintenance system—In 1996, Melbourne IT was delegated administration of the com.au ccTLD. Melbourne IT designed and implemented a new domain name registration and application processing system. The system known as DATE, (Domain Administration Tool) was developed within a very aggressive time frame producing one the first automated ccTLD registration systems in the world. DATE interfaces with a broad range of internal and external data sources including real–time interaction with the central database of registered Australian businesses. Currently, the system supports more than 180,000 com.au domains and processes up to 12,000 new com.au applications each month. The com.au domain space continues to grow as one of the most highly prized ccTLDs globally and the MIT technical solution has continued to grow with it. The back end system includes support for complex policy checking routines that ensure the integrity of the technical and policy components of com.au. Melbourne IT has continued to develop and enhance this system to meet the needs of its customers incorporating facilities for automated redelegation, mass modifications and a specialized renewals system designed for use by our channel partner community.   

TLD registration system—In June 1999, Melbourne IT deployed the first truly automated domain name registration and administration system for top level domains. Called SPIN (System for Processing Internet Names), it was the first system of its type in the world with an API supporting multiple interfaces including HTTP Post, an email template, a web interface as well as a component supporting multiple operations in a single transaction. The system has continued to grow with support for a real-time online payment option and enhanced security mechanisms including SSL and PGP encryption. The system utilizes a 3-tier architecture that supports secure, real time transactions from channel partners. All of the major components of SPIN were developed in-house at Melbourne IT including the distribute network infrastructure, registration and maintenance database, Whois database, API, automated system monitoring components, billing and collections interface, security components, communications modules, transaction logging and an extensive system reporting component.  Since January 2000, this system has been enhanced to support multi-lingual domain name registration, domain name generation technology and ccTLD registration support.

JVTeam’s technical capabilities cover all the requirements for the operation of a reliable and secure top level domain registry service. We will utilize our experience in registry and database design and implementation to provide the next generation domain name registry, one that ensures the stability of the DNS and paves the way for the introduction of competition into the TLD marketplace.