13 June 2002

Mike Lawrie, ZA Administrator

In reactions to the concerns over the possibility of a major disruption to the ZA domain name system arising out of Chapter X of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Bill, I wish to assure the Internet community that I have taken steps that will ensure the utmost stability in the technical operation of the ZA domain name.

Under the present circumstances, it would be irresponsible of me not to take appropriate steps in order to avoid the possibility of a disruption. The Internet was designed to be an unbombable network, I have used some of its design features that ensure this.

In brief, for the technically minded, the primary zonefile has been moved offshore. This is fully within all technical specifications of the Internet's domain name system. In due course, when the dust has settled on what has become a political football over a technical function of the Internet, the file will no doubt be moved back to South Africa by whoever will and must succeed me as administrator of this domain. No doubt there will be some emotional reaction to this move, but technical stability is a far more important issue.

The operation of the ZA domain is not affected whatsoever by this move. All subdomains, such as CO.ZA, AC.ZA, GOV.ZA, MIL.ZA, LAW.ZA etc are not affected either. The move has been totally transparent to all users of the Internet other than to the few persons who operate the ZA nameserver computers.

Contact Information:
Mike Lawrie
mlawrie @ apies.nrf.ac.za
+27 12 481 4148
ZA Administrator