Polandâs ccTLD .pl had a bumper quarter in the first quarter of 2018 with over 246,000 domain names registered, NASK announced in their quarterly update released this week. However the overall number decreased by 5,787 names for the quarter, a decrease of 0.22%, the lowest for the last 5 quarters.
At the end of March 2018 there were 2,570,276 active .pl domain names registered to over one million registrants. The number of registrants increased by almost 6,000 and 2,700 domain names were registered on average each day.
Over three-quarters (76.21%) of all .pl domain names were registered at the second level while one in five (19.30%) were registered at the third level (under 2LDs such as .edu.pl, .org.pl, .net.pl), and the remaining 4.49% were registered in regional domains (e.g. .szczecin.pl, .katowice.pl).
The renewal rate for Polandâs country code top level domain also grew to 63.29%, the highest for the last 9 years.
DNSSEC was also a great success during the quarter with the number of .pl domain names secured growing to more than 487,000, an elevenfold increase on the end of the previous quarter. This was largely due to activities undertaken by the registry such as DNSSEC technical workshops, consultancies and support for Partners as well as an information animation for registrants. The growth in DNSSEC is a sign, NASK says, of security becoming more and more essential element in the .pl domain name market.
There was also the first ever Internet Domain Day on the streets of the Polish capital Warsaw on 15 March organised by NASK. Internet Domain Day was the start of an education and information campaign. Next year the .pl registry is going to expand the scope of activities of celebrating the Internet Domain Day.
The number of Partners, at the end of the first quarter, amounted to 215. NASK, within the frames of the Partner Programme of the .pl registry, successively trains its Partners. Training and technical workshops, such as the EPP workshop held in March, assist in maintaining high quality and security level of services in the .pl domain.
The full report can be downloaded from:
https://www.dns.pl/english/NASK_Q1_2018_REPORT_EN.pdf