Service degradation in IANA public WHOIS services for top-level domains

26 March 2008

ICANN, in managing the IANA function, provides WHOIS services for informational purposes to the public. This service is not used in management or updating of the root zone data, and does not affect its accuracy. It is an additional and separate service to the authoritative root zone data.

Between 20 February and 14 March 2008, information in IANA's public WHOIS services for top level domains was not properly updated. That caused some of the nameserver information to be different from the authoritative information in the root zone. The accuracy of the root zone data was unaffected. The problem was identified and repaired and all services have been correct and operational since 15 March 2008.

Staff has thoroughly reviewed this issue and while there were several contributing factors, the main cause was a software failure in a new system deployed on 20 February. Process changes are being implemented to ensure that this problem is not repeated in the future.

As noted above, there was no impact on root zone information and the operational impact on the service affected was minimal.

ICANN’s mission is to provide accurate information and operate to the maximum extent feasible in an open and transparent manner, so ICANN has published this notice for public attention.