Secondary DNS Service for ccTLD Operators

The RIPE NCC offers a best-effort secondary name service to the other RIRs, along with some country code top-level domain (ccTLD) operators who are in the start-up phase of their operations. There is no associated cost to the zone operators for receiving secondary services by the RIPE NCC. Appendix 1 lists the currently supported zones at the time of writing this document.

In 2014, the RIPE community provided the RIPE NCC with a set of guidelines regarding the requirements and policies for providing ccTLD services. These guidelines are recorded in this RIPE Document and direct the operational decisions of the RIPE NCC when adding or terminating secondary services to operators.

DNS Secondary Service Guiding Principles

1. RIPE NCC should only provide secondary DNS for ISO3166 ccTLDs and IDN ccTLDs
2. RIPE NCC should exchange letters with ccTLD operators, to be renewed periodically
3. The agreement to provide secondary DNS will have a finite lifetime, to be reviewed along with the refresh letter
4. Eligibility criteria to be used by the RIPE NCC:
   1. Size of zone (number of registrations)
   2. Number and diversity of other name servers
   3. Usage of commercial DNS/name service
5. For ccTLD operators who already receive secondary DNS service from the RIPE NCC, the eligibility criteria will be applied no earlier than May 2016
6. Additions and removals will be reported to the DNS Working Group

Appendix 1 – List of ccTLDs for which RIPE NCC provides secondary services (dated 20 October 2015)