There haven't been any major complaints from the registrars. Still, some consumers who have been frantically trying to register domains say that just a few minutes of inaccessibility can prove disastrous because there's such fierce competition to snatch up catchy-sounding names. As a fallback, registrars can look to another database called the Whois , which is compiled by NSI and shows which names have been registered. But the Whois is only updated two times a day to reflect all registrars' Net name sales, so when users rely on that tool, they may try to register a name that isn't available. NSI said there haven't been any cases when a name has technically been registered twice, however, because when the SRS does come back up, it alerts users who have tried to register a domain name whether it has already been taken.
Registrars say they are trying to learn how to keep serving customers when glitches occur.
The details still need to be hammered out, however, and no deadline was set. Inc. All rights reserved. Privacy policy .