.au Domain Administration
 | |
| Type: | Non-profit |
| Industry: | Internet |
| Founded: | 1997 |
| Headquarters: | 114 Cardigan Street, Carlton VIC 3053 |
| Country: | Australia |
| Website: | auda.org.au |
| Blog: | blog |
| Key People | |
| Chris Disspain, Chief Executive Officer Tony Staley, Chairman | |
.au Doma- (auDA) is a self-regulatory body which administer and manage the operations of the .au country code top level domain name (ccTLD).
History[edit | edit source]
.au ccTLD[edit | edit source]
The .au ccTLD was established in 1986 and it was delegated to Robert Elz, a network programmer at the University of Melbourne. He served as manager of .au ccTLD in a volunteer capacity. During his management .au ccTLD underwent a tremendous growth and internet users increased thus a strong demand for registrations.As a result,eleven second-level domains were established under .au which include asn.au, com.au, conf.au, csiro.au, edu.au, gov.au, id.au, info.au, net.au, org.au, and oz.au.[1]
Australian Domain Name Administration[edit | edit source]
The Australian Internet Community realized that the responsibility of administering the .au ccTLD can no longer be handled alone by Mr. Elz to due to the increasing number of registrants and decided to establish a private-sector self-regulatory body capable of administering the .au ccTLD that is more accountable to the community through the assistance of the Australian government.[2]
In 1997,the Australian Domain Name Administration (ADNA) was founded to ensure the operations of a functional Internet naming system in Australia for the .au domain. However,the ADNA Board eventually concluded that organization did not have the necessary authority to effectively operate and be accountable to the local Internet community.The decided to seek the assistance of the Australian National Office for the Information Economy (NOIE) and the Ministry of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts to facilitate the development of an effective Internet industry self-regulatory body and to supervise the transfer of delegation for the administration of the .au domain space to the new organization.[3]
.auDA[edit | edit source]
In 1999, the .au Domain Administration was created after the Australian government through NOIE agreed to help in developing a self-regulatory body to assume the responsibilities of Mr. Elz to manage the .au ccTLD. Mr. Elz sub-delegated to auDA on November 15, 1999. On October 2000, .auDA submitted a comprehensive report that the organization met the objectives necessary to receive government endorsement to assume the responsibilities to manage the .au ccTLD. By December 2000, Sen. Richard Alston, Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts formally endorsed auDA as the appropriate entity to administer of the .au ccTLD.[4]
Role of auDA[edit | edit source]
As the administrator and manager of the .au ccTLD, auDA performs the following functions:[5]
- Develop and implement domain name policy
- License 2LD registry operators
- Accredit and license registrars
- Implement consumer safeguards
- Facilitate the .au Dispute Resolution Policy
- Represent .au during ICANN meetings & activities as well as in other international internet organizations