When you choose your domain name registrar, you are putting a great deal of trust in them and you might not even notice all of it. Most people think that a domain name registrar is the master of the files for your domain information and that is just not true. They do hold most of the records, but they also Report vital information to a Registry.

There are specific registries for each TLD. These Registries hold Authority and the Root Zone Files for the specific TLD’s and gTLD’s. Here is a full list of domain name extensions and who the registry is for each.

Many people think when they register or renew a domain name, that when they do this, that is it. The fact is, it is not. Your part is done, but now your trust goes to the registrar you have choosen for your domain name. I will use the .com TLD for this example and a renewal.

After you renew your domain name at a registrar, you pay for the renewal fee and your part is done. The registrar now has to report to the registry that you have done this, so the root zone files can be updated. The way the registrar reports to the registry is by paying the fee, the registry charges registrars for a specific TLD or gTLD. Currently this is $6 USD for .com domain names and the registry is Verisign.  In paying the registry, the registrar also provides 3 things to registry. The domain names Creation Date, Expire Date and the current Domain Name Servers.

Now you are not the only one to renew your domain or to register a new domain. This is a Massive opperation. Let’s take Godaddy.com (Registrar) for instance. Godaddy get’s about 30,000 "new" domain names Daily. These are either new registrations or transfer in’s from other registrars. Now if all these were .com (and they are not),  godaddy would have to pay Verisign (.com’s registry) the fee for each of the .com domain names. This fee is currently $6 USD and will go up to $6.42 in October. So Godaddy is paying Verisign approx $180,000 USD daily for the "new domains". Now these are just "New" domains to Godaddy. Godaddy.com is the largest registrar in the world and currently control 24,421,299 domain names total. Many of these domain names also get renewed on a daily basis and so on.

So again, this is on a massive scale. Your one little renewal could easily be "lost" or forgotten if a proper process is not in place. Now keep in mind, registrars are a business like any other business. It takes money to run a business and at times, money is tight. When the registrar RegisterFly.com went down, they had money troubles and what they did, was when a customer was paying them for a renewal, the simply were Keeping the money and Not reporting the renewal to the registry. By not reporting to the registry, that in return did not update the root zone files for the domain names that people Thought they had renewed, really didn’t get renewed. The root zone files is the system put in place to make the mathematical decision on when a domain names status changes. There are many status a domain name can have. Grace Period, Registrar Hold, Redemption Period, Pending Renewal Deletion, Expired etc.

ICANN is an orginazation that was put into place to monitor and police domain name registrars. There are many guidelines registrars must follow and one of them, in section 3.2.2   Within five (5) business days after receiving any updates from the Registered Name Holder to the data elements listed in Subsections 3.2.1.2, 3.1.2.3, and 3.2.1.6 for any Registered Name Registrar sponsors, Registrar shall submit the updated data elements to, or shall place those elements in the Registry Database operated by the Registry Operator. So this is put in place to protect consumers but the main way ICANN finds out about misconduct of a registrar is from the public, so it is your duty to report any wrong doing by a domain name registrar.

If the registrar is a big one like Godaddy.com (24 Million domains), eNom.com (8 Million domains), NetworkSolutions.com (6 Million domains) etc, 99.9% of the time, you have nothing to worry about, as they all have automatic systems in place and pay the registry instantly. If you are with a smaller registrar, this is not the case and it does happen that they do not report to the registry! This happened to a friend of mine recently. It has been nearly 4 months since the renewal took place and the domain renewal has still not been reported to the registry. Luckly I had noticed this and we still had time to deal with it. Most would not notice it and there domain name would end up expiring because the root zone files would not get updated.

What’s the safe guard for a domain name owner? You MUST check whois information via the registry (Verisign Whois)! Not the registrar, not some 3rd party whois provider and so on. Now there is a slight delay in updating the zone files, but it really should not be any longer then 24 hours. So from time to time if you are with a big registrar, you will want to double check with the registry that your renewal was reported. Keep in mind, a registrar has 5 business days to report it, so if it’s 6 business days later and no change to the zone files, contact your registrar and find out what’s going on! If you are with a small registrar, you almost have to check every renewal that you submit and verify with the registry that your renewal was sent and the zone files are updated.

Jamie Zoch www.DotWeekly.com