Five million domain names were added across all TLDs across the globe in the first quarter of 2014, replicating the number added in the fourth quarter of 2013, Verisign announced in their latest Domain Name Industry Brief, taking the total Domains Under Management to 276 million as of 31 March.The increase of five million domain names in the first quarter globally equates to a growth rate of 1.7 percent for the quarter, compared to 1.9 percent in the fourth quarter 2013. Worldwide registrations have grown by 19.3 million (18.5 million in the calendar year of 2013), or 7.5 percent (7.3%), year over year.The .com and .net TLDs experienced aggregate growth, reaching a combined total of approximately 128.5 million domain names in the adjusted zone in the first quarter of 2014. This represents a four percent increase year over year. This compares to the year ending 31 December 2013, when the figures were 127.2 million and five percent. As of 31 March, 2014, the DUM in .com equalled 113.2 million names (112m at the end of Q4), while .net equalled 15.2 million names, the same as for the end of Q4, 2013.New .com and .net registrations totalled 8.6 million during the first quarter of 2014. In the first quarter of 2013, new .com and .net registrations totalled 8.8 million. These figures were up on the fourth quarter of 2013 where new registrations were 8.2 million and 8.0 million in Q4 2012. This could reflect seasonal variations but it could also show new gTLDs aren’t impeding new .com registrations.In their report, Verisign provide some pieces of trivia, including the 69 percent of all .com websites are in English. Another two are that over 95 percent of networks are compromised in some way while internet users send 204 million emails per minute.Among ccTLDs, 27.1 million domain names were added, a 2.9 percent increase quarter over quarter, and a 13.1 percent increase year over year. Among the top TLDs overall, .ru (Russia) moved up one place to eighth, swapping places with .info.The largest TLDs in order by zone size were .com, .tk (Tokelau – 25.5m), .de (Germany – 15.7m), .net, .uk (United Kingdom – 10.5m – Nov 2013), .org (10.4m), .cn (China – 10.7m), .ru (Russian Federation – 4.9m – August 2013), .info (5.6m) and .nl (Netherlands – 5.5m).*Among the 20 largest ccTLDs, four exceeded 4 percent overall quarter-over-quarter growth: Tokelau (8.0 percent), Argentina (7.2 percent), India (15.2 percent) and Colombia (12.4 percent). This marks four straight quarters where Tokelau has exceeded 4 percent growth.As of 31 March, there were 283 global ccTLD extensions delegated in the root (including Internationalised Domain Names), with the top 10 ccTLDs comprising 65.8 percent of all ccTLD registrations.Again as of 31 March, there were 198 new gTLDs delegated into the root; 125 of which were delegated during the first quarter of 2014.During the first quarter of 2014, Verisign’s average daily Domain Name System (DNS) query load was 85 billion across all TLDs operated by Verisign, with a peak of 120 billion. Compared to the previous quarter, the daily average increased 3.4 percent and the peak increased 20.6 percent. Year over year, the daily average query load increased 14.8 percent and the peak query load increased 6 percent.As more companies bring their businesses online, there is an increased concern over domain name security. This quarter’s featured article, “The Domain Threat Landscape: Protecting Critical Infrastructure Requires a Layered Security Approach” provides a brief summary of domain name hijacking and some preventative measures and tools to help ensure your domain name is secure.The report is available for download from:
www.verisigninc.com/en_US/innovation/dnib/index.xhtml * Registry statistics are sourced from RegistrarStats.com, domain-recht.de and individual registries. Registries sometimes do not provide up to date statistics publicly which explains discrepancies.
Tag Archives: .ar
.AR Domains No Longer To Be Free
As of 5 March, NIC Argentina will introduce a registration fee for .ar domain names of less than 200 pesos ($25.50) per year, according to the national director of Nic.AR, Gabriel Brenta. The fee will apply to new and existing registrants.
The registry is attempting to join global practices by introducing a registration fee Brenta told the Spanish language news agency DyN.
Brenta added that payment will affect, in principle, those who apply to register a new domain, but he also made it clear that it will be also applied to around three million users that already have sites and must renew their registration annually.
“The cost is per domain per year. In the case of those who have the domain registered, as the use of the domain is annual, must be paid at the time of renewal, Brenta said. Brenta recalled that to date, the registration of domains in the Argentina is free and stressed that this condition applies in “few countries” of the world, and none in the region.
Free .ML Domains Come With Extra Phishing
Registering domain names in Maliâs ccTLD, .ml, has been free since July, but they come with an added bonus â phishing. According to a report published by Netcraft, âMali now has the most phishy top-level domain of any country in the world.â
According to the report, there are one in 17 âincidents to sitesâ for the 581 websites using .ml domains. Netcraft report there are 34 sites currently blocked due to phishing incidents. This is a long way ahead of the second worst ccTLD for phishing incidents, the .ne (Niger) which has a total of 170 sites with two of these currently blocked for phishing incidents, or one in 85.
Of ccTLDs with more than 100,000 sites, the worst is .cl (Chile) that has 280,540 sites, 510 of which are currently blocked due to phishing incidents, a ratio of one in 550. And for ccTLDs with more than one million sites, .ar (Argentina) is worst 450 sites currently blocked out of 1,001,660, a ratio of one in 2,225.
The Malian ccTLD recently joined .tk (Tokelau), whose registry operator Dot TK is a subsidiary of Freedom Registry who is the registry operator for .ml, and is the largest ccTLD with over 15 million registrations and who also had major problems with phishing. But Dot TK introduces an anti-abuse API to allow trusted partners to shut down sites that use .tk. Netcraft note that âthis dramatically reduced the average uptime of phishing sites which used .tk domains, making it a less attractive platform for fraudsters. Indeed, .tk does not even appear within the top 50 phishiest TLDs today; however, considering .tk and .ml share the same owner, this makes it somewhat surprising to see .ml being so heavily abused already.â
For the complete list compiled by Netcraft of the worldâs 50 phishiest ccTLDs, go to toolbar.netcraft.com/stats/tlds.
Nic.ar Implementing Security And Privacy Enhancements
The Argentinian ccTLD manager, nic.ar, is implementing new security and privacy enhancements and as a result will be offline for five days from 14 August, with normal service including the changes resuming on 20 August.
The ccTLD manager stopped support at 17:00 on the 14th and the new website with new enhancements will commence at 10:00 on the 20th.
More information in Spanish is available from the news report at www.fayerwayer.com/2013/08/no-se-podran-registrar-dominios-en-argentina-por-una-semana.
.TK Rockets To Largest ccTLD, Second Largest TLD
The .TK ccTLD, one of the three TLDs with the most malicious domain registrations and whose domains are mostly given away for free, has rocketed into first place among ccTLDs with 16.7 million active registrations according to the latest CENTR DomainWire report.The tiny Pacific island of Tokelau, with a population of 1353 according to the CIA Factbook, is, along with .COM and .INFO, responsible for 82 percent of malicious domain registrations, says a phishing survey released by the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) released in April.With the mostly free domains, at the end of April 2013 the CENTR DomainWire reports there were 1.3 million more .TK registrations than .DE (Germany) with 15.4m then .UK (United Kingdom) with 10.5m.Following this was .CN (China) with 7.5m, then .NL (Netherlands – 5.2m), .RU (Russian Federation – 4.5m), .EU (European Union – 3.7m), .BR (Brazil – 3.2m), .AR (Argentina – 2.9m) and.AU and .FR (Australia and France – 2.6m).Of course, they are all dwarfed by .COM with 108.8 million registrations according to Registrar Stats.Of the top ccTLDs by registration numbers, .CN had the highest growth rate in the last six months, growing by 82.7 percent, followed by .TK that grew by 54.7 percent, .IN (India – 14.3%), .RU (12.5%) and .FR (6.4%).Other highlights of the DomainWire report were:
- there were 64.2 million ccTLD registrations in Europe
- the average renewal rate across European ccTLDs was 79 percent
- the Portuguese ccTLD .PT had the highest 12 month net growth of 27 percent
- the most common use of a domain name was for commercial reasons for 61 percent of European ccTLD registrations
- the average number of characters in a European domain name was 10.7 characters
- 28 out of 42 ccTLDs (67 %) in the region offer IDNs in their zone with a further 3 planning to implement ( Cyprus, Belgium and Slovakia)
- high numbers of IDNs can be found in the Russian .IDN TLD (.PФ ) with just under 800,000 followed by .de with over 600,000.
To download the CENTR DomainWire report in full, go to:
centr.org/system/files/share/domainwire_stat_report_2013_1.pdf
Four Millionth .RU Domain Registered
The four millionth .RU (Russian Federation) domain name has been registered with total registrations approaching 4.004 million as this article is published.
.RU is the fifth largest ccTLD behind .DE (Germany) with 15.2 million registrations, followed by .TK (Tokelau) however the registry does not publish registration statistics for its free domain names. Third is .UK (United Kingdom â 10.2m) then .NL (Netherlands â 5.04m), .RU, .CN (China â 4.13m as of 31 July), .EU (European Union â 3.67m), .BR (Brazil â 3.05m), .AR (Argentina â figures unknown) and then .AU, currently with 2.52m registrations.
More to come.
.AU Passes 2.5 Million Registered Domains
The number of registered .AU (Australia) domain names passed the 2.5 million mark in late August, auDA and AusRegistry announced.Since passing two million registrations in March 2011, the .AU namespace has grown at a steady pace thanks, the regulatory and policy body and registry note, to the combined efforts of accredited registrars in promoting .AU as Australia’s home on the internet. Approximately 86 percent of all .AU domain names are registered under .com.au.According to Verisign’s latest Domain Name Industry Brief, .AU is the tenth largest ccTLD. The largest is .DE (Germany) with almost 15.19 million registrations today. Second is probably .TK (Tokelau) however the registry does not publish registration statistics for its free domain names, followed by .UK (United Kingdom – 10.2m), .NL (Netherlands – 5.03m), .RU (Russian Federation – 3.99m) .CN (China – 4.13m as of 31 July), .EU (European Union – 3.65m), .BR (Brazil – 3.05m), .AR (Argentina – figures unknown) and then .AU, currently with 2.51m registrations.