What happens when a Domain Registar is down for months with no end in sight? | Hacker News Reader

What happens when a Domain Registar is down for months with no end in sight?

7 pointsusernamebias7 comments

The registrar is Register.To -

Website has been showing same message for months.

Twitter account is silent since January.

What options do I have?

I would love to login and transfer my domains, but I am unable to login. Since page is completely down.

The TLD belong to the Republic of Tonga.

This is unprecedented. And I'm at a lost.

Do domains expire on said Registar regardless?

I have a very Profitable SaaS on a .To domain.

If it goes down , I'm looking at $10k/day in loss revenue.

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Contact the Tonga Network Information Center ( https://www.tonic.to ).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.to#cite_ref-6

> The .to registry allows the creation of emoji domain names. A former .to registrar, Register.TO, did support the search and registration of .to emoji domain names. Register.to is no longer an authorized registrar for .TO domain names when making a transaction. The death of its owner in early February 2023 was stated by the NIC of Tonga according to an online review.

Sounds like someone ought to step up and pitch themselves as the new domain registrar for Tonga.

https://www.iana.org/domains/root/db/to.html

Tonic.to appears to be the authorized domain registrar. Register.to appears to have been a reseller.

Does this mean Tonic has the ability to access Domains? Or that's not how it works.

Edit: I contacted Tonic and they got this resolved. I' so relieved.

I searched the Internet for any Representative, to no avail.

Thank you, shagie, your link did the trick.

In some later searching... the name in IANA and that it was in Burlingame piqued my interest - Eric Gullichsen is a rather distinctive name.

Some of the history of the domain can be read at Domain Names, Tonga and Two Guys Named Eric - https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-06-09-fi-1560-s...

(and amusing to me the email address of the reporter was @best.com - and I remember that ISP from my days out there too).

Oh dear.

Edit: In contact with Tonic.to. They are looking into it.

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