Tag Archives: greece

Domain Name Registrants, Domain Name Registrars, Domain Name Registry

.GR Launches .ελ on 10 July

Greece’s internationalised ccTLD .ελ is set to launch on 10 July at 11:00 local time, the registry has announced.

In an announcement by the registry ICS-FORTH GR, they advise that the registration of domain names under the .ελ country code top level domain will be possible for every interested person or legal entity, as long as the domain name of choice (or any homographs) is not already registered under .gr.

To begin, ICS-FORTH GR explains, for a period of 3 months following the start of operations of the .ελ Registry, the assignment of .ελ Domain Names will be carried out in accordance with the following provisions of the “Regulation on Management and Assignment of .gr and .ελ Domain Names” and under the following restrictions:

  • .ελ Domain Names in which the Variable Field is the same or a homograph of the Variable Field of already assigned second level .gr Domain Names are to be assigned only to the Registrant / Holder of the corresponding second level .gr Domain Name.
  • .ελ Domain Names in which the Variable Field is the same or a homograph of the Variable Field of already assigned third level .gr Domain Names in which the second level is Non-variable and assuming there is no assigned second level .gr Domain Name with the same or a homograph Variable Field are to be assigned to the Registrant / Holder of the corresponding third level .gr Domain Name who first submits a Registration Declaration.
  • In case there are homograph second level .gr Domain Names assigned to different Holders, then the corresponding .ελ Domain Names are not assigned.

These restrictions cease to exist following the end of the three-month period on 10/10/2018 at 11:00 local time.

The complete terms and conditions for the registration of domain names under .ελ can be found at the Regulation on Management and Assignment of .gr and .ελ Domain Names.

Domain Name Registry, ICANN and Governance

ICANN: IDN ccTLD Request from Greece Successfully Passes String Evaluation

ICANN logoICANN is pleased to announce the successful evaluation of the proposed IDN ccTLD string for Greece.

Details of the successful evaluation are provided here: www.icann.org/en/resources/idn/fast-track/string-evaluation-completion

The Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) ccTLD Fast Track Process was approved by the ICANN Board at its annual meeting in Seoul, South Korea on 30 October 2009. First requests were received starting 16 November 2009. The process enables countries and territories to submit requests to ICANN for IDN ccTLDs, representing their respective country or territory names in scripts other than Latin. IDN ccTLD requesters must fulfill a number of requirements:

  • the script used to represent the IDN ccTLDs must be non-Latin;
  • the languages used to express the IDN ccTLDs must be official in the corresponding country or territory; and
  • a specific set of technical requirements must be met.

The request and evaluation processes entail three steps:

  • Preparation (by the requester in the country / territory): Community consensus is built for which IDN ccTLD to apply for, how it is run, and which organization will be running it, along with preparing and gathering all the required supporting documentation. Requests are submitted through an online system together with additional material supporting the process at http://forms.icann.org/idn/apply.php
  • String Evaluation: Requests are evaluated in accordance with the technical and linguistic requirements for the IDN ccTLD string(s) criteria described above.
  • String Delegation: Requests successfully meeting string evaluation criteria are eligible to apply for delegation following the same ICANN IANA process as is used for ASCII based ccTLDs. Requesters submit string delegation requests to IANA root zone management: root-mgmt@iana.org.

With this announcement, requests from a total of 37 countries/territories have successfully passed through the String Evaluation stage. Of these, 29 countries/territories (represented by 39 IDN ccTLDs) are delegated in the DNS root zone, with the remainder either readying to apply, or actively applying for delegation of the string. Up-to-date information about the IDN Fast Track Program will continue to be provided on the Fast Track Process web page at https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/fast-track-2012-02-25-en.

ICANN looks forward to enabling the availability of non-Latin country-code domains for countries that meet the Fast Track Process requirements. ICANN will continue to accept new string evaluation requests in the Fast Track Process. Staff support is available to help all countries and territories interested in participating in the Fast Track Process. Please email idncctldrequest@icann.org for any inquiries for participation.

This ICANN announcement was sourced from:
https://www.icann.org/news/announcement-2015-05-04-en

 

Opinion

Europe Continues To Lead IPv6 Adoption With Belgium Out Front: Akamai

Europe is the global leader when it comes to IPv6 adoption according to the Third Quarter, 2014 State of the Internet Report from Akamai, with Belgium growing to more than one quarter of its requests to Akamai coming over IPv6, and Germany seeing more than 10 percent of requests over IPv6.Greece’s adoption of IPv6 is also growing strongly, with its adoption rate more than tripling over the previous quarter. At a network provider level, Belgium’s Brutele and Telenet both saw on the order of half of their connections to Akamai come in over IPv6.But IPv4 addresses continue to grow. In the quarter, more than 790 million IPv4 addresses connected to the Akamai Intelligent Platform from more than 246 unique countries/regions. The global number of unique IPv4 addresses making requests to Akamai grew by nearly two million quarter-over-quarter, a nominal increase after a loss of seven million in the second quarter.Looking at the top 10 countries in the third quarter, the unique IP count in the United States saw a small gain of approximately 20,000 addresses. In addition to the United States, Brazil, France and Russia saw nominal increases in unique IPv4 address counts, while the remaining six countries saw unique IPv4 address counts slightly decline from the second quarter. Fifty-eight percent of countries saw a quarter-over-quarter increase in unique IPv4 address counts, with 28 countries/regions growing by 10 percent or more.Cable and wireless providers continued to drive the number of IPv6 requests made to Akamai, many of which are leading the way for IPv6 adoption in their respective countries. Verizon Wireless and Brutele saw more than half of their requests to Akamai made over IPv6, with Telenet close behind.When it comes to security, the volume of observed attack traffic targeting web ports (HTTP, HTTPS, HTTP Alternate) declined significantly in the quarter. In addition, the number of attacks against websites and applications reported by Akamai customers remained consistent quarter-over-quarter. These trends, Akamai notes, may be indicative of attack vectors shifting away from the application layer to focus on network layer targets – this is consistent with an observation made in the latest report.Akamai customers reported 270 DDoS attacks for the second quarter in a row. Overall, this represents a 4.5 percent reduction in attacks since the beginning of 2014 and a four percent decrease in comparison to the third quarter of 2013.In contrast to the second quarter’s report, the number of attacks fell in both of the Americas, with 142 attacks, and in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region, with 44 attacks.However, the number of attacks in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region rose by 25 percent from the previous quarter to 84.The report also looked at connectivity with slight declines seen across average and average peak connection speeds, high broadband adoption, and 4K readiness. Only broadband adoption saw an increase, but it was only one percent. The long-term trend is the key indication Akamai notes, and the continued strong growth we continue to see points to ongoing improvements, on average, in the state of broadband connectivity around the world.For mobile, the report notes that despite dominating four of the five metrics for fixed connectivity, South Korea only led the mobile metrics for average connection speed in the third quarter, with Singapore seeing the highest average peak mobile connection speed and Japan seeing the highest level of mobile broadband adoption. Interestingly, high fixed connection speeds also led some of these same Asia Pacific countries/regions to have the highest “mobile penalties” – that is, pages loading significantly faster on average over broadband connections than over mobile connections.South Korea’s highest average mobile connection speed grew from 15.2 Mbps to 18.2 Mbps in the third quarter. Iran had the lowest average mobile connection speed at 0.9 Mbps, and was the only qualifying country with an average speed below 1 Mbps. Slovakia joined South Korea above the 10 Mbps “high broadband” threshold at 10.9 Mbps.Average peak mobile connection speeds again spanned an extremely broad range in the third quarter, from 98 Mbps in Singapore down to 3.3 Mbps in Iran. Nine countries/regions had average peak mobile connection speeds above 50 Mbps, while another 40 saw speeds above 10 Mbps.And on internet disruptions, once again, internet connectivity was problematic in Syria, with multiple disruptions seen during the third quarter. Iraq saw multiple disruptions as well, due to issues with the major network service providers in the country. Gambia, Liberia, and Sierra Leone all saw Internet outages that may have been due to issues with submarine cables, while a brief issue in Venezuela was related to a power outage in the country.More information is available, along with the report to download, from:
www.akamai.com/html/about/press/releases/2015/press-010815.htmlThere are also blog postings and further information used in the above report available on the Akamai site.