Neustar accuses Afilias of misleading over .au

The transition of the .au domain to Afilias’s registry platform sparked controversy after former registrar Neustar accused the company of “misinformed” statements about the switch.

The transfer of .au’s 3.15 million domains to the Afilias platform commenced in December and was completed at the start of the month.

In a blog post, Neustar VP of Australian Registry Services George Pongas said he was concerned that the Australian internet community may have been misinformed about the transition.

In statements leading up to the transition, Neustar made claims that appeared to imply that Neustar had not been providing 24/7 technical support and that the company does not operate a DNS node in Perth, whereas Neustar has been providing both.

Pongas said Afilias had also implied that the new registry will offer superior technology to the Neustar platform, as well as additional features and enhanced DNS capacity security.

But he said unlike the Neustar platform, the Afilias platform has been retrofitted to match the .au domain. Neustar’s DNS has also scaled globally to handle massive traffic and has multiple layers of security, and the new platform will not have all the previous features of the Neustar platform as implied.

Outspoken auDA critic Jim Stewart said the accusations make him fear for the future of the .au domain. He noted that auDA has also been accused of membership stacking, which has resulted in a 50% foreign membership base, and has moved its own domain to Canada.

“If they’ve had problems with their own .au then what hope does the rest of Australia have if they finally introduce .au?” he said.

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/Edelweiss

Please follow us and share on Twitter and Facebook. You can also subscribe for FREE to our weekly newsletter and quarterly magazine.