Unsponsored TLD Agreement: Appendix E (.name)
(2 July 2001)
Service Level Agreement
1. Definitions. Capitalized terms used herein and not otherwise defined shall have the definitions ascribed to them in Appendix D to the Registry Agreement.
2.1 Calculation of SLA Credit - If SRS Availability is less than the specified service level as defined in Appendix D to the Registry Agreement, then ICANN-Accredited Registrars connected to, and actively operating on, the SRS Service by adding domains in the Claim Month will be entitled to an SLA Credit. The SLA Credit will be calculated in the following way:
for S > A, where:
C
= Calculated compensation in US dollars N
= Number of new domain name registrations by claiming Registrar during the Claim Month R
= Current Pricing Level for a domain name in US dollars S Agreed service level during the Claim Month in percentage A
= Availability of service during the Claim Month in percentage Example of SLA Credit Calculation:
Registry Operator records a service level exception across a Claim Month of 25 minutes beyond the time periods contemplated by the SLA. Assuming the Claim Month had 30 days, the Claim Month will contain a total of 43,200 minutes. The 25 minute service level exception equates to 25/43,200 = 0.058% downtime. For purposes of this example, the current pricing level is assumed to be $5.25 and the total number of new domain name registrations by the claiming registrar is 50,000. Thus:
N = 50,000
R = $5.25
S = 99.4% (the agreed SRS Availability)
A = 99.342% (99.4% - 0.058%)
C = US $7.61
2.1.1 Under no circumstances shall Registry Operator issue SLA Credits when the availability problems are caused by network providers and/or the systems of the individual ICANN-Accredited Registrars.
2.1.2 Registry Operator will not attempt to discern what discount levels were in effect at the time the specific time of the service level exception, but rather use the then-current discount level. All SLA Credit will be paid, including the appropriate discounts and rate levels, according to the then-current rate schedule.
2.2 Submission of Claim for SLA Credit - In order for ICANN-Accredited Registrars to claim SLA Credit, the following procedure must be followed:
2.2.1 The ICANN-Accredited Registrar must submit any claims for credits for any particular Claim Month to Registry Operator by fax within 7 days of the end of the Claim Month. Such claims must include the ICANN-Accredited Registrar's calculation of SRS Unavailability.
2.2.2 Credits can only be claimed by ICANN-Accredited Registrars that were connected to and actively operating on the SRS Service by adding domain name registrations in the Claim Month.
2.2.3 SLA Credit will only be given for periods of SRS Unavailability that have been reported as outlined in Subsection 3.1 below.
2.3 Validation of Claim - Registry Operator will confirm the validity of SLA Credit application as outlined in Subsections 3.2 and 3.3 below.
2.4 Maximum Credits - The total amount of SLA Credit, across all ICANN-Accredited Registrars, issued by Registry Operator for a Claim Month shall not exceed 5% of Registry Operator's previous Monthly Timeframe's revenue from domain name registrations eligible for SLA Credits. The total amount of SLA Credits, across all ICANN-Accredited Registrars, given by the Registry Operator in a given calendar quarter shall not exceed 5% of the previous calendar quarter's revenue as generated by domain name registrations eligible for a SLA Credit. For purposes of this SLA, Cooperative Marketing Fund Contributions do not constitute revenue.
2.5 Payment of Credits - SLA Credits claimed and validated, as outlined in Subsections 2.1 and 2.3 above, will be given to the ICANN-Accredited Registrar by applying them to the ICANN-Accredited Registrar's prepaid account if such account exists. If no such prepaid account exists, then the SLA Credits shall issue as otherwise agreed between the parties and in accordance with Subsection 3.9 below.
2.6 Appeal of Credits - If the ICANN-Accredited Registrar has a dispute with regards to the accuracy of the payment of SLA Credit, as outlined in Subsection 2.1, the following procedures will apply:
2.6.1 The ICANN-Accredited Registrar may, within 7 days of the Registry Operator validating the claim, send in a request for a review of the calculation. Such request must clearly state the reason for the request.
2.6.2 The request will be assessed and returned with a response within 7 business days.
2.6.3 If the calculation is not revised to the satisfaction of the ICANN-Accredited Registrar, the ICANN-Accredited Registrar may request that the matter be referred to Registry Operator's Compliance Manager. The Compliance Manager will then use reasonable efforts to establish the ICANN-Accredited Registrar's grounds for the complaint.
3.1 The affected ICANN-Accredited Registrar must assist the Registry Operator by reporting each occurrence of alleged SRS Unavailability to Registry Operator customer service help desk in the manner required by Registry Operator in order for an occurrence to be treated as SRS Unavailability for purposes of the SLA. Registry Operator will treat all SRS Unavailability problems equally and fix them within a commercially reasonable period of time; however, Registry Operator reserves the right to prioritize the order according to problem severity. Incidents flagged by the Monitoring Tools described in Section 5 of Appendix D will also be qualified as ticketed events and will be logged for validation purposes.
3.2 In the event that all ICANN-Accredited Registrars are affected by SRS Unavailability, Registry Operator is responsible for opening a blanket trouble ticket and using commercially reasonable efforts to notify the ICANN-Accredited Registrars of the trouble ticket number and details.
3.3 Both ICANN-Accredited Registrars and Registry Operator must use commercially reasonable good faith efforts to establish the cause of any SRS Unavailability. If it is mutually determined to be a Registry Operator problem, the incident will become part of the Unplanned Outage Time.
3.4 Registry Operator will perform monitoring from internally located systems as a means to verify that the conditions of the SLA are being met.
3.5 ICANN-Accredited Registrars must inform Registry Operator any time their estimated volume of transactions (excluding check domain commands), will exceed their previous month's volume by more than 25%. In the event that an ICANN-Accredited Registrar fails to inform Registry Operator of a forecasted increase of volume of transactions of 25% or more and the ICANN-Accredited Registrar's volume increases 25% or more over the previous month, and should the total volume of transactions added by the Registry Operator for all ICANN-Accredited Registrars for that month exceed the Registry Operator's actual volume of the previous month's transactions by more than 20%, then the ICANN-Accredited Registrar(s) failing to give such notice will not be eligible for any SLA Credit in that Monthly Timeframe. ICANN-Accredited Registrars shall provide their forecasts at least 30 days prior to the first day of the next applicable month. In addition, Registry Operator agrees to provide ICANN-Accredited Registrars with monthly transaction summary reports starting no later than 120 days after the Commencement-of-Service Date.
3.6 Registry Operator will notify ICANN-Accredited Registrar of Planned Outages outside the Planned Outage period at least 7 days in advance of such planned outage. In addition, Registry Operator will use commercially reasonable and good faith efforts to maintain an accurate 30 day advance schedule of possible upcoming Planned Outages.
3.7 Registry Operator will use commercially reasonable efforts to restore the critical systems of the SRS Service within 48 hours in the event of a Force Majeure and will use commercially reasonable efforts to restore full SRS Service functionality within 72 hours. Outages due to a Force Majeure will not be considered as SRS Unavailability.
3.8 Beginning no later than 120 days after the Commencement-of-Service Date, the Registry Operator will publish preliminary weekly SRS Service performance and availability reports. Registry Operator will use best efforts to finalize these reports no later than 30 days after the preliminary reports are provided.
3.9 The SLA will be reconciled, and SLA Credits will be issued, on a quarterly basis.
3.10 The ICANN-Accredited Registrars, as a group, may, under reasonable terms and conditions, audit the reconciliation records for the purposes of verifying service level performance and availability. The frequency of these audits will be no more than once every six month period during the term of the Registry-Registrar Agreement.
3.11 Registry Operator's obligations under this SLA are waived during the first 120 days after the Live SRS Launch as described in Appendix J to the Registry Agreement.
3.12 Registry Operator will initiate the addition, deletion or other modification of DNS zone information to the master DNS server within 5 minutes of a Transaction. Registry Operator will notify ICANN-Accredited Registrars regarding any scheduled maintenance and unavailability of the TLD root-servers. Registry Operator will use reasonable efforts to notify ICANN-Accredited Registrars in advance when changes to the schedule occur.
3.13 Registry Operator will provide SRS Availability percentages during each Monthly Timeframe as listed in Appendix D Section 4 - Service Levels.
3.14 Registry Operator will update the Whois Service pursuant to the procedures and timelines described in Appendices C, D and O of the Registry Agreement. Registry Operator will notify ICANN-Accredited Registrars in advance when changes to the Whois Service update schedule occur.
4.1 This Appendix is not intended to replace any term or condition in the Registry-Registrar Agreement.
4.2 Dispute Resolution will be handled pursuant to the arbitration provisions of the Registry-Registrar Agreement.
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