HAPPY BIRTHDAY INTERNET SOCIETY !

CHAPTER IV "THINK GLOBALLY AND ACT LOCALLY"

4.4 ITALY'S SUPPORT TO ACTIVATE ccTLD REGISTRIES

Nigeria [ita]
Nigeria [en]
Abraham Gebrehiwot

.

.

  • A request for establishment of the ".ng" ccTLD was approved in1995; the .ng was delegated by Dr. Jon Postel (then in charge of the IANA function) to Ms. Iyabo Odusote from Yaba College of Technology, Lagos, Nigeria as administrative contact.
  • As collaborator of the CNUCE Institute, I have been the first technical contact for the country code TLD ".ng". The delegation of ".ng" has been prepared in the frame of the UNESCO/RINAF project.
  • Iyabo Odusote followed the technical courses organized within the project and one in particular took place at CNUCE in Pisa, where the ".it" registry was managed.
  • Being one of the teachers in the courses, I volonteered to help in organizing ".ng".
  • My colleagues of CNUCE, in particular: Francesco Gennai (that has been active also in the start up phase of ".al" for Albania), Antonio Blasco Bonito and Damir Pobric were extremely helpful in sharing their technical expertise during the implementation of the ".ng" registry.
  • The primary name server was managed at the CNUCE Institute and I was in charge of the data entry portion of the zone file ".ng". In this way, I have been able to set up a domain name management infrastructure consisting of: the primary name server, interaction with end users, whois database management, domain name registrations under .ng and archiving of registered records.
  • The first registered domain name under ".ng" has been "yaba.edu.ng." At that time we installed a UUCP-TCP/IP email gateway at the CNUCE Institute and the "yaba.edu.ng" domain served to exchange e-mail from Nigeria and directed towards the same with the rest of the Internet.
  • At that time the quality of telephone lines and the stability of the electrical circuits in Nigeria were really bad. With a lot of patience, we were able to demonstrate that realizing a low cost networking in Nigeria was possible.
  • The news began to arrive on the Nigerian national newspapers; all this gave enthusiasm to many research institutions and commercial operators and allowed to create and extend the networking connectivity and also to increase the number of registered domains under ".ng".
  • In few months new commercial ISPs were created and the registered domain names under the TLD ".ng" continued to grow.
  • I also received many emails from Nigerians asking: why the domains were registered and operated in Pisa, if we had economic benefits from the management of the registrations, and why the service was not run by a Nigerian structure, etc.
  • I explained that everything was handled, at no cost, within the UNESCO RINAF project, to which Nigeria participated and that the registration of domain names was conducted with the aim of encouraging the expansion of networking in the country and to transfer the registration activity in Nigeria, when conditions were possible, at no cost.
  • I was also invited to participate in various local initiatives to explain the state of the art of the TLD management and to exchange views with the pioneers of networking in Nigeria. There was a lot of enthusiasm.
  • After the end of the RINAF project, my role as a technical contact continued until July 30, 2001 when the friend Randy Bush was appointed as the new technical contact; he installed the main server in US and simplified the registration procedures.
  • At the time of the hand-over, the number of registered domain names was in the range of 600.
  • This hand over was agreed between Stefano Trumpy, former technical coordinator of RINAF project and later Italian delegate to the Governmental Advisory Committee of ICANN, with the Nigerian delegate in the GAC.
  • In 1998 from Nigeria two requests for redelegation of ".ng" came to IANA and, since the first meetings of GAC within ICANN, a message was sent to the Nigerian government that no redelegation was possible until the government will have communicated a unique request.
  • The problem was finally solved in 2004 and the National IT Development Agency was delegated to run ".ng"; form this time the regsitration service has been fully managed in Nigeria, 9 years after the first delegation.
Happy Birthday ISOC
index