25 Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP)

Prototypical answer:

Go Daddy will implement the Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP) in conformance with the Proposed Standard and Informational RFCs 5730, 5731, 5732, 5733, 5734, 5910, 3915 and 3735 (where applicable) published by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

Note: XML tags begin with ʺ〈 ʺ so that they show up when printed via the TAS Application Preview.

TRANSPORT & SECURITY

Registry-defined connection limits will be configurable but limited equally for all registrars. Each connection will have a configurable inactivity timeout and lifetime timeout. Metrics will be captured for all transactions to allow for equal access and SRS stability.

Go Daddy’s EPP gateway will use system port 700 for mapping EPP onto Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). The EPP servers will be protected by firewalls. The actual IP of the servers will be hidden through a virtual IP from the load balancer. Registrars will be required to register their IP subnets with Go Daddy to allow access through the firewalls. The client (registrar) and server (SRS) will perform a mutual authentication during the connection handshake where both sides pass valid SSL certificates to each other to establish the link. The certificate will be required to be signed from a trusted certificate authority.

The system will support EPP on SSL3.0 and Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocols over standard TCP⁄Internet Protocol (IP) sockets. Go Daddy will use TLS 1.0, which is compliant with RFC 2246.

Go Daddy’s EPP gateway will provide a connection-oriented EPP service. Upon the establishment of a connection (client and server SSL⁄TLS handshake) the EPP Gateway server will send a greeting message to the client. Sending a “hello” command will also generate a greeting message back to the client.

Go Daddy’s EPP gateway will support synchronous mode (no pipelining): a response to a command must be received by the client before sending another. Go Daddy has elected this mode to allow greater flexibility in the number of objects sent in an individual request.

TEST ENVIRONMENT

An isolated Operational Test & Evaluation (OT&E) environment will be available for registrar testing prior to production operations, allowing registrars to develop and test their client software systems with no risk to production systems.

REGISTRAR CREDENTIALS

OT&E credentials will be provided to participating registrars. Once OT&E certification has been successfully completed, registrars will be provided Production credentials. ICANN Testing Registrar accounts will be set up by default per gTLD pursuant to the Registry Agreement.

SESSION MANAGEMENT

To start an EPP Gateway session, the client will send a “login” command using valid credentials. An EPP Gateway session will be closed by sending a “logout” command or simply by closing the TCP connection. After an initial greeting, clients will always be able to query the Gateway by sending a “hello” command.

TIME ZONE

Go Daddy’s EPP gateway will return the date and time in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), as specified by the EPP standard, RFC 5731, Section 2.4. Registry operations will be performed based on this time.

SUPPORTED LANGUAGES

Four languages will be supported by Go Daddy’s EPP gateway: English, French, German and Spanish. Registrars will be able to make the selection at login, which is compliant with RFC 5730, Section 2.9.1.1.

SUPPORTED EPP COMMANDS

In order to communicate using EPP, Go Daddy will support the following core set of actions:

1. Greeting: hello

2. Session Management: login and logout

3. Query: check, info, poll, and domain transfer

4. Transformation: create, update, renew, transfer and delete

EPP VALIDATION

Extensible Markup Language (XML) schemas are a means of exactly describing the possible content of an XML document. As such, Go Daddy will refer to the schema definitions that describe EPP’s syntax. Registrars will be expected to send a valid XML document in order to communicate with Go Daddy’s SRS. Go Daddy’s EPP gateway will perform a schema validation as the first step of the handling of the XML document, using a validating XML parser. Invalid documents will generate an error message from the validation object that will be returned to the registrar.

It will be required that all EPP XML instances begin with a 4-byte header (in Network order⁄Big Endian format) indicating the total message size (including the 4 bytes), followed by 〈 ?xml?〉 declaration using a recognized character set (UTF-8 or UTF-16) with an XML version of 1.0. All EPP commands will be enclosed within an 〈 epp〉〈 ⁄epp〉.

EPP PROTOCOL & OBJECT MAPPINGS

EPP Namespaces⁄Schemas which will be used within Go Daddy’s EPP gateway:

* Namespace - urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:epp-1.0 (RFC5730)
Schema - epp-1.0.xsd
* Namespace - urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:eppcom-1.0 (RFC5730)
Schema - eppcom-1.0.xsd
* Namespace - urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:domain-1.0 (RFC5731)
Schema - domain-1.0.xsd
* Namespace - urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:host-1.0 (RFC5732)
Schema - host-1.0.xsd
* Namespace - urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:contact-1.0 (RFC5733)
Schema - contact-1.0.xsd
* Namespace - urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:secDNS-1.1 (RFC5910)
Schema – secDNS-1.1.xsd
* Namespace - urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:rgp-1.0 (RFC3915)
Schema - rgp-1.0.xsd

RESOURCING PLAN

Resourcing will come from current staff throughout the parent organization: Software Development, Network Operations, IT, Security Operations, and Business Continuity Departments. Go Daddy will incorporate all new gTLDs added to the Go Daddy registry into existing workflows to obtain immediate workability. Go Daddy has anticipated additional headcount in the coming year for all affected departments. See the headcount estimate in the ʺCASH OUTFLOWSʺ section in Go Daddyʹs answer to Question 46.

Similar gTLD applications: (2)