CENTR Monthly Roundup, .AU Consults, .RU Neutralises Domains And .CA Internet Forum

CENTR logoCENTR have published their monthly roundup on what members have been up to recently, a survey on member outages for maintenance, the growth in the full member zone that now has over 65 million domain names under management and an extract from the CENTR paper Fifth World Telecommunication/ICT Policy Forum

CENTR logoCENTR have published their monthly roundup on what members have been up to recently, a survey on member outages for maintenance, the growth in the full member zone that now has over 65 million domain names under management and an extract from the CENTR paper Fifth World Telecommunication/ICT Policy Forum.

The survey on system maintenance and disturbances among CENTR members was to identify industry standards for maintenance and disturbances, how frequently registries normally close down for maintenance and how long are systems down due to this? The results indicated that a high, if planned, frequency is less of an issue than the time a maintenance window takes.

Most respondents (89%) stated they operate their system and interface internally rather than to an outsourced third party.

The Roundup also looked at the median growth of full members with growth declining from 15.3 percent in 2009 to 9.1 percent in 2012. No doubt this is influence by the maturing domain name market for many CENTR members. Median renewals have increased slightly over this period, starting at 79.5 percent, declining slightly and are now at 81.5 percent.

CENTR Member Map

Down under, AusRegistry and the .au Domain Administration (auDA) have launched an online survey aimed at the broader Australian community, asking their opinions about the .au domain namespace.

The survey is the first of its kind in the .au namespace and is seeking 10,000 responses over three months to provide a baseline performance standard to measure against annually in future surveys.

A key element of the survey is an investigation into the domain name purchasing behaviour of Australian consumers. Anecdotal evidence suggests Australians exhibit a strong preference for .au domain names and trust it over other namespaces such as .com, .nz or .asia. The survey will also identify trends in .au domain name uptake using demographic data.

Another area of interest the survey will examine is the introduction of new generic Top-Level Domains later this year and what impact this might have on consumers and .au.

Travelling back to Europe, 244 malicious domain names in the .ru and .рф zones were neutralised in January with another ten still the delegation process.

The biggest share of detected malicious domains (80%) is accounted for by phishing resources, 12 percent is accounted for by the resources that spread malicious software. The least share falls on the domains through which botnets are being controlled (the networks of infected computers): there were only eight percent of such domain names.

Over in North America, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA), the organisation that manages .ca, is kicking off its annual consultation with a feature event in Ottawa and an online forum, providing all Canadians with an equal voice to discuss the issues that impact the safe and fair use of the internet.

The Canadian Internet Forum (CIF) commenced on 28 February at the Ottawa Convention Centre. At the forum, CIRA brought together leading thinkers and experts to discuss a variety of Internet-related topics, including digital literacy, cyber-security and internet governance.