Author: John Demco

Redesigned .CA Registry System To Launch On October 12 – CIRA has announced that its new registry system for .ca will launch on October 12. Based on the industry standard Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP), the system will make it easier for Canadians to register and maintain their .ca domain names. The operation of domain names,…

Member Nominees Seek Shows of Support For CIRA Election – CIRA has published the statements of those seeking to be included on the Member’s Slate in the forthcoming CIRA Board of Directors election. To be included on the slate, a nominee must receive the support of at least 20 CIRA Members. Shows of Support may…

.NL and .ORG Reach Milestones – The Netherlands’ .nl domain has reached four million registrations, and the .org domain has achieved 8.5 million registrations. According to SIDN, the .nl registry, “in proportion to its population of 16 million, the Netherlands has the highest local domain name density in the world, with roughly one .nl domain…

Member Nominations For 2010 CIRA Board Election Close Soon – CIRA has issued a call to its membership to submit nominations for the Members’ Slate of the 2010 CIRA Board of Directors election. Nominations are being accepted until Monday, August 16. Each nominee must receive at least 20 shows of support from CIRA Members in…

CIRA Announces Nomination Committee Candidates For Election – CIRA has announced the Nomination Committee slate for the 2010 CIRA Board of Directors election. The candidates selected by the committee are: Paul Andersen, Daniel Blanche, Gary Evans, John King, Martin Kratz, Rowena Liang, Louise Macdonald, and Brian Wentzell. The call for Member nominations commences on Tuesday,…

Root Zone Signed – DNSSEC (DNS Security Extensions) has been enabled at the root zone as of July 15. The work was done by VeriSign and ICANN, working in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Commerce. DNSSEC supports the digital signing of DNS data, and the signing of the root zone together with the establishment…

Here are notes on a number of topics from the ICANN meetings held in Brussels on June 20-25, 2010: .XXX Domain Application Moves Forward – Following ICANN’s 2007 rejection of ICM Registry’s application for the .xxx TLD, and after an Independent Review Panel issued a finding against ICANN, the ICANN Board resolved to accept the…

Worldwide Domain Name Registrations Surpass 193 Million – According to the latest Domain Name Industry Brief published by VeriSign, the first quarter of 2010 ended with more than 193 million domain names worldwide, an annual increase of 11 million registrations, or 6%. Registrations from the ccTLDs stood at 76.3 million, a 2.9% decrease for the…

.CA Registry Approves 2010-2011 Corporate Plan – The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) has posted its 2010-2011 Corporate Plan as approved by the CIRA Board on June 1. Among the major activities planned for the coming year are: rewriting the registry management system, hosting a Canadian Internet Governance Forum, and undertaking a Community Investment Program…

Here is a selection of recent domain-related items: Neustar, the .us domain registry operator, is proposing to make one- and two-character .us domain names available. It also proposes to launch a .us URL shortener service, and to expand the marketing of .kids.us. New proposals for a Bulgarian TLD name in Cyrillic are being discussed. The…

Nameserver Misconfigurations Cause .DE Domain Disruption – On May 12, several nameservers for Germany’s .de domain were updated with a zone file containing just one third of the actual .de domain data, resulting in incorrect “domain does not exist” responses. The problem started at about 13:30 CEST and was resolved at about 15:45. DENIC, the…

First IDN ccTLDs Active – In an important step in the development of the Internet, the first non-Latin IDN ccTLDs were added to the root zone of the DNS on May 5. The three new ccTLDs are for: Egypt: مصر (Egypt), Saudi Arabia:  السعودية (AlSaudiah), and United Arab Emirates: امارات (Emarat). Under a process approved…

First IDN Top-Level Domains Approved – The ICANN Board has approved the delegation of the first four IDN ccTLDs: рф (xn--p1ai, “R.F.”) representing the Russian Federation, السعودية (xn--mgberp4a5d4ar, “Al-Saudia”) representing Saudi Arabia, امارات (xn--mgbaam7a8h, “Emarat”) representing the United Arab Emirates, and مصر (xn--wgbh1c, “Misr”) representing Egypt. New Second-Level Domain Names Considered for Australia – auDA,…

Some domain name items from the past week: The .fr registry AFNIC has published a paper called “The Secondary Market in Domain Names”. The paper presents a clear description of concepts and issues in this rapidly growing area. CIRA has announced that ArtSchoolReviews.ca is the winner of CIRA’s ShowUsYour.CA video contest. Runners up were DringDring.ca…

ICANN Seeks Comments on .XXX Process Options – ICANN has posted for public comment a report and flowcharts of possible process options concerning the .xxx TLD application by ICM Registry. Also, ICM has written another letter to ICANN indicating that “the Board should vote to execute the registry agreement … without further delay.” However, while…