- 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.
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