What is RDAP?
RDAP and AU domain names is a hot topic a the moment. The Registration Data Access Protocol (RDAP) is an alternative to WHOIS for accessing Internet resource registration data. RDAP is designed to address a number of shortcomings in the existing Whois service. The most important changes are:
- Standardization of queries and responses
- Internationalization considerations to cater for languages other than English in data objects
- Redirection capabilities to allow seamless referrals to other registries
WHOIS has had a lot of issues over the years in relation to privacy and accuracy. Bottom dwellers and opportunists such as spammers would scrape data from WHOIS queries for various reasons, including an attempt de-fraud Registrants of domain names using various tricks.
RDAP will re-invent Whois. According to ICANN, RDAP has several advantages over Whois including secure access to data and the ability to provide different levels of access to registration data – for example, limited access for anonymous users.
gTLD Registries and Registrars were required to implement RDAP last year; but will not entirely replace Whois yet.
How will this impact .AU domain names?
Afilias, the Australian Registry responsible for the .au domain name space and recently noted that there is still a lot of technical planning to conduct for RDAP. Afilias who manage over 3.2 Million AU domain names also note on their website that they have not yet been given a deadline for implementation.
They note that as a self-regulatory body for the .au namespace, auDA is open to its introduction, but explain that current protocols are working satisfactorily in .au.
“Before adopting its own version of RDAP protocol in Australia, auDA has taken the opportunity provided by ICANN meetings to closely monitor the adoption of RDAP protocol by other gTLDs and ccTLDs. This will help auDA adopt the protocol in a way that is compliant, and balances privacy and accountability.”
So it may be a few years before we see RDAP and AU domain names working together, but something that will definitely assist brand owners in the fight against cyber-attacks.
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