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Is .io safe now? Identity Digital now running Mauritian ccTLD
Identity Digital appears to have taken over the back-end registry for Mauritian ccTLD .mu, potentially improving the company’s chances of future-proofing at-risk .io.
IANA records show that .mu has started using Identity Digital’s nameservers and Whois service. Registrars say the migration to ID’s EPP system happened last week.
Mauritius is poised to be given sovereignty of the Chagos archipelago, formally known as the British Indian Ocean Territory, from the UK, assuming the still-unpublished treaty is approved by both governments.
BIOT is assigned the popular .io ccTLD which may have more than a million registrations and makes Identity Digital, which acquired the UK-based registry operator a few years ago, about $40 million a year.
The change of control of Chagos, which would certainly come with a name change for the territory, puts the future of .io at risk, as I have been reporting for the last several months.
But with Identity Digital now in bed with the .mu ccTLD manager — a private company named Internet Direct that also goes by MU-NIC — it has a foot in the door for improving relations with the country, should .io come under threat in future.
I believe MU-NIC was previously using CoCCA’s software to manage .mu.
(Hat tip: DI reader “Tom”)
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The way to mitigate this risk would be to request a review of the ccNSO Retirement Policy here:
https://ccnso.icann.org/sites/default/files/field-attached/board-report-proposed-policy-retirement-cctlds-17sep21-en.pdf
What the heck is going on with .mu?
Apparently existing two- and three-letter .mu domains are appearing at high-premium prices as they come up for renewal, so something like “69.mu” which I’ve had since 2007 just to share it as a base domain for freedns.afraid.org users is suddenly roughly ONE HUNDRED TIMES more expensive (so roughly a jump from $60/yr to something in the $6000 range).
No notice, no explanation, just ambushed at renewal time – and if it’s on autorenew, heaven help the poor registrant who gets dinged with four figures (recurring) for one annual renewal.
I (and I expect, many others with two- or three-letter .mu) can’t afford this but, given the nature of “afraid.org” as a shared resource, *.69.mu going away could take down as many as 6000 subdomains assigned to different individual afraid.org users – many inactive, admittedly, but enough will be in for a very annoying or ugly surprise when the (now-expensive) base domain goes away.
I search for info online and, other than one passing comment from an individual reddit user, nothing. This has slipped completely under the radar. It will break things… not sure how many things (as .mu is an obscure extension and it’s just the shortest names that are affected) but it will break things.