Starting today, November 27th, 2007, new domain names is now published in the DNS five times a day. This is at the following times: 4 am – 7 am – 12 pm – 5 pm – 11 pm.
As reminder, registration and publication of data via the Whois domain name service is now available round the clock, seven days a week. In operations that do not require human intervention, the ticket workflow continues uninterrupted until the ticket is closed, regardless of the time slot.
The following schema sums the main differences between « Before November 15th », « From November 15th to November 27th » and « After November 27th »:
http://www.afnic.fr/data/divers/prive.isp/ouverture-chaine-enregistrement-afnic.pdf
The AFNIC may set aside a time slot for service interruptions required for management or maintenance. A daily closing time slot is set up between Midnight and 4am.
Some adjustments may be made within one month after this date.
Source AFNIC