December Digest: The Most Important Events on Info.NIC
We present to our readers the December edition of our digest of the most interesting events in the domain and IT industries, published on Info.NIC.
Domain Name News
The introduction of new domain zones is postponed
ICANN has postponed the introduction of new gTLDs. One of the reasons for this decision was an insufficient assessment of the risks associated with the launch of new gTLDs.
This decision was made during the latest ICANN meeting. However, ICANN is not completely abandoning this possibility; the issue is currently being postponed.
Let us recall that ICANN previously planned to introduce the possibility of creating new top-level domain zones for everyone.
Free registration of IDN domains has begun.
On December 21, 2010, free registration of Cyrillic domains com.ua/kiev.ua began. This means that anyone can register these domains, and the registration process will be no different from the regular Latin domains com.ua and kiev.ua.
During the pre-registration and priority registration periods, more than 3,000 Cyrillic domains were registered in the .com.ua/kiev.ua domain zones on the RuNet. The registration of Cyrillic names became one of the year's major events in the RuNet, and the Cyrillic domain zone .РФ became one of the largest European domain zones.
The .РФ domain became one of the main events of last year.
Russian internet market analysts have named the .РФ domain and the Twitter boom as the main internet events of the past year.
The emergence of the Cyrillic domain zone has become a major milestone for the Russian Internet market.
IDN domain registrations have begun in Israel.
ISOC-IL, the Israeli domain administrator, has launched the registration of domain names with Hebrew characters. Registrations are available in third-level domain zones, specifically co.il and org.il.
Registration of such domains is available to anyone. Since August 30, trademark owners, government agencies, and media outlets have been able to register IDN domains in co.il and org.il.
The introduction of new domain zones is not approved by the Internet community.
Many participants in the domain name registration market are protesting the introduction of new domain extensions. Industry representatives believe that the emergence of new domain extensions will lead to widespread copyright infringement and intellectual property violations. Furthermore, it's possible that the new domain extension management principles will be transferred to existing top-level domains, particularly .COM.
Furthermore, the emergence of new domain zones could also lead to ICANN becoming mired in lawsuits and unable to effectively manage the domain name system.
Only 20% of Estonian .EE domains were re-registered
The .EE domain zone reform is scheduled to be completed by the end of this year. The reform called for the re-registration of all .EE domains. However, a month before the end of the reform, domain owners had re-registered only 20% of the total.
There are approximately 80,000 domain names in the Estonian domain. The administrator of the Estonian domain, Eesti Interneti SA, announced that after January 5 of this year, domains that have not been re-registered will be deleted.
IPv4 addresses are almost exhausted
According to IANA, after the allocation of four IPv4 address blocks to Regional Internet Registries on November 30, only about 3% of address blocks remained available.
Active allocation of addresses is taking place for new devices connecting to the Internet, as well as for the growing number of domain names, the number of which currently exceeds 202 million.
The last IPv4 addresses will be exhausted in September 2011.
The ChronoPay payment system's website was hacked.
In December, the service's website, or more precisely, its main page, was hacked, redirecting users to another domain, although no official statement from the service's administration has yet been published. Payments via ChronoPay are still being processed successfully.
Ex.ua may become a paid service
The file-sharing service Ex.ua may become a paid service. This is due to the resource being blacklisted by the Recording Industry Association of America.
Paid access to content will allow the resource to earn the money needed to pay copyright holders.
The "Adult" Domain is in Question
At the ICANN meeting, the Administrator for the .XXX domain zone was appointed – ICM Registry. Final discussions on the new domain zone will begin at the next meeting in June 2011.
ICANN hasn't yet announced anything about the new domain extension. The organization plans to hold meetings regarding the launch of .XXX registrations.
ICANN believes it would be appropriate to launch a Fast Track process for the .XXX zone, meaning accelerated implementation. This process involves pre-registration in several stages to minimize the likelihood of domains being seized by cybersquatters.
The .UA domain administrator will facilitate the delegation of the .УКР domain.
.UA domain administrator Dmytro Kokhmanyuk is ready to facilitate the delegation of the Ukrainian national domain. The current stage of delegation of the national Cyrillic IDN domain is unknown. Kokhmanyuk outlines the steps required for the delegation of the .УКР domain, the first of which is confirmation of the name following public comment.
Registration of IDN domains in .COM.UA/.KIEV.UA is active
In the first few hours since the start of IDN domain registration in the .COM.UA/.KIEV.UA zones, more than two thousand new names were taken. More than 40% of them were registered by the registrar.NIC.UA.
Analysts comment that several thousand more IDN domains will be registered in the first week.
The number of names in the British .UK domain has exceeded 9 million.
The 9 millionth domain was registered in the British domain zone.
The administrator of the .UK domain zone reports that users have been actively registering domain names this year. This year alone, the number of domains in the UK domain zone has increased by one million, or 11%.
Ru-Center has created its own stoplist for domains in the .РФ zone.
Ru-Center has created an additional stoplist of names prohibited for registration in the .РФ domain. This list supplements the original one created by specialists at the Coordination Center for TLD RU and published simultaneously with the launch of free registration.
This means that now, with each domain registration in the .РФ zone, the names will be checked for compliance with two stop lists.
A root DNS server has been installed in Ukraine.
A local DNS root server containing information about top-level domains has been launched in Ukraine.
The root server is a "mirror" of one of ICANN's thirteen root servers called the "L-root".
Less than 1% of domains use DNSSEC.
The total number of domain names using the secure DNSSEC protocol is only 0.02%. However, the number of such domains has increased by 340% over the past year, according to research by InfoBlox and Measurement Factory.
This limited support for DNSSEC means that most domain names are vulnerable to malicious attacks.
Results of the year
Instead of a traditional article collection, we offer a selection of materials covering the domain market's year-end results, published on Info.NIC.
2010 Results: Ukrainian Domain Name Market
To conclude 2010, the AIN.UA editorial team initiated a series of blitz surveys in which market participants shared their segment's performance during the past year. We decided to begin with domain names, which were frequently covered in the media in 2010. Our questions were answered by Pavel Blotsky, CEO of Imena.UA, and Andrey Khvetkevich, Director of Service Online (domain name registrar NIC.UA).
The global domain market in 2010: key events
In this article, we have collected the most interesting materials from the domain market in 2010.
Domain Market 2010: The Cyrillic Domain .РФ
One of the major events of 2010 was the start of registrations in the Cyrillic domain zone .РФ. This process was accompanied by disputes, investigations, and accusations. We offer a brief overview of the events surrounding the Cyrillic domain .РФ.
NIC.UA registrar's main achievements in 2010
As we wrap up the year, let's recall NIC.UA's key achievements in 2010.
The Ukrainian domain market in 2010: key events and trends
This material presents the main events of the Ukrainian domain name market in 2010.
