The registry fee for .it domain names is dropping by a quarter, from €4 to €3, for 6 months Registro.it announced in late December.
.IT Drops Registry Fee By 25% Until 30 June
Tag Archives: .it
.BR Hits 4 Million Domain Name Registrations
Brazilâs ccTLD manager, NIC.br, announced [Portuguese only] Monday theyâve reached the 4 million registrations mark after âmore than 25 years of flawless operationâ.
There are over 120 second level domains under which .br domain names can be registered from blog.br and wiki.br for individuals to eng.br and adv.br for liberal professionals, tv.br and tur.br for legal persons, rio.br, sampa.br and curitiba.br for cities those reserved for specific purposes such as gov.br, jus.br, b.br and org.br among others. Some of these have as few as 10 registrations, while the largest, com.br has 3,645,125 accounting for 91.2% of all registrations.
According to the latest Verisign Domain Name Industry Brief, .br is the seventh largest country code top level domain (ccTLD). Verisign already had .br at 4 million domain name registrations at the end of 30 June, probably through rounding, up in this case, to the nearest hundred thousand. Chinaâs ccTLD was the largest with 22.7 million followed by Tokelauâs free .tk (21.5m), Germanyâs .de (16.3m), the United Kingdomâs .uk (12.0m), Russiaâs .ru (5.9m), the Netherlandsâ .nl (5.8m). Following .br is the European Unionâs .eu (3.8m), Franceâs .fr (3.2m) and rounding out the top 10 is Italyâs .it (3.1m).
Revenues from .br registrations allow NIC.br to, in addition to providing and maintaining the infrastructure behind .br, invest in a series of actions and projects that generate benefits and improvements to the internet infrastructure in Brazil. These include the operation of internet traffic exchange points, which promote the interconnection of networks that form the Internet in Brazil, reducing distances and costs; the handling security incidents and tracking internet statistics.
Nic.br notes that other advantages of registering .br domain names include additional security features, such as token and encryption, that strengthen both the accounts of Registro.br users, and their respective domains. There is another recent feature: a redirection feature that lets you point a .br domain to any URL, whether it’s on a website or the preferred channel on social networks, keeping identities and active tags on the Internet permanently. Servers distributed by Brazil and other regions of the world guarantee speed and reliability in the resolution of .br and a team exclusively dedicated to meet and assist users in their doubts complete the description.
.CN Regains Top ccTLD Rank As .TK And .NET Shed Registrations, While Global Registrations Hit 329 Million: Verisign
2016 closed with global domain name registrations reaching 329.3 million according to the latest Verisign Domain Name Industry Brief, growing by approximately 2.3 million registrations, or 0.7% over the third quarter of 2016. Registrations grew by 21.0 million, or 6.8%, year over year. The most notable changes over the last 12 months were China’s ccTLD adding over 4 million registrations to become the largest ccTLD again, while .tk and .net shed over 7 million and 500,000 registrations respectively.
Total country code top level domain (ccTLD) domain name registrations were approximately 142.7 million, a 1.8% increase over the third quarter of 2016, and a 3.1% (4.3 million) increase year over year.
Without including .tk which has dropped from 26 million to 18.7 million in the 12 months to the end of 2016, ccTLD domain name registrations increased approximately 2.1 million in the quarter, a 1.7% increase compared to the third quarter of 2016 and ccTLDs increased by approximately 8.0 million domain name registrations, or 6.9%, year over year.
It means China’s ccTLD has now overtaken the free registration model of .tk to become the largest ccTLD and second largest TLD overall, again, positions it last held back in 2009 when it had over 14 million registrations. In the last 12 months .cn has grown by 4.24 million registrations.
At the end of 2016, .com was the largest TLD with 126.9 million registrations, followed by .cn with 21.1 million, .tk (18.7 million), .de (16.1m) and .net (15.3m). The largest of the new gTLDs remains .xyz which had 6.0 million registrations.
The top 10 ccTLDs, as of 31 December were .cn (China), .tk (Tokelau), .de (Germany), .uk (United Kingdom), .ru (Russian Federation), .nl (Netherlands), .br (Brazil), .eu (European Union), .au (Australia) and .it (Italy).
There were 293 global ccTLD extensions delegated in the root, including Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs), with the top 10 ccTLDs composing 64.7 percent of all ccTLD domain name registrations.
For .com and .net, both operated by Verisign, .com grew from 124 million registrations at the end of 2015 and 115.6 at the end of 2014. However for .net it’s a different story and it has suffered since the introduction of new gTLDs. In 2016 .net bled half million registrations from the 15.8 million one year ago but is still above the 15 million at the end of 2014.
New .com and .net domain name registrations totalled 8.8 million during the fourth quarter of 2016. In the fourth quarter of 2015, new .com and .net domain name registrations totalled 12.2 million.
New generic Top Level Domains (new gTLDs) totalled 25.6 million domain name registrations, which represents 7.8% of total domain name registrations. The top 10 new gTLDs represented 63.% of all new gTLD registrations.
Verisign’s average daily Domain Name System (DNS) query load during the fourth quarter of 2016 was 143 billion across all TLDs operated by Verisign, with a peak of 398 billion. Quarter over quarter, the daily average increased 11.4 percent and the peak increased by 122.5 percent. Year over year, the daily average query load increased by 16.0 percent and the peak increased 105.1 percent.
.FR: Another ccTLD Reaches The 3 Million Club
A week or so after the Italian ccTLD .it reached three million registrations, the French ccTLD reached the same milestone.
It means the French country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD), today with 3,005,270 registrations, is probably the tenth largest ccTLD behind .it given the latest Verisign Domain Name Industry Brief for the end of June, discounting .tk (Tokelau) due to it giving away its domain names and the large amount of phishing spam and scams using the ccTLDâs domains.
The .fr grew by 2.1% in 2016 and the registry says simplicity, attractiveness and trust are the main reasons for its success.
“Registering a .fr domain name is one of the keys to a successful online presence for companies and individuals alike,â said Mathieu Weill, Afnic CEO. âTo support the development of their business on the Internet, Afnic has set up the Réussir-en.fr program (réussir-en.fr), and intends to continue its efforts to make France a European leader in online presence.”
.fr domain names are available for registration to any person or business with a mailing address in the European Union.
Afnic donates 90% of the profits generated by .fr to its Foundation for Digital Inclusion(fondation-afnic.fr) which funds field projects to make the Internet accessible to the greatest number of people and to reduce digital exclusion throughout France.
.IT Passes 3 Million Registrations After 30 Years
The Italian ccTLD passed the 3 millionth domain under management this week with the nominal title of the 3 millionth domain going to abbigliamentoludica.it, registered by a company from Eboli in the province of Salerno. Today there are 3,002,800 domains registered only slightly behind the tenth largest ccTLD, .fr, with 3,003,803 registrations.The very first domain name registered for the Italian country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) was cnuce.cnr.it, registered in December 1987 by CNUCE, an institute of the CNR of Pisa.In 2005, .it passed the one million mark with lucavullo.it registered by a private citizen, a student of music and performing arts in Bologna. Five years later in 2010, the number of domains had doubled to two million with light-stone.it, registered to a company from Acqualagna (Pu).This year the .it Registry asked Pragma to conduct a survey on “Digital and web technology in Italian micro enterprises“. The sample analysed consisted of 1200 micro enterprises, with up to nine employees, representing all sectors: manufacturing, commerce, construction and services. It was revealed that 67% of companies have at least one domain and 5% have more than one. 65% of micro-enterprises with a domain use it to read email, and only 15% use it for communication and marketing. Nine in ten (91%) are not involved in e-commerce. The sample analysed also showed that Facebook with its 28 million users is used for business purposes by only 27% of those interviewed, while 71% admit they have no company page on any social network. The positive fact is that 73% of the interviewed companies that have a domain name chose .it over other top level domains such as .com, .net, .eu and .org.”The .it domain has grown steadily over time,” said Domenico Laforenza, director of the .it Registry and the IIT-CNR. “It’s preferred over other extensions, and this is due to an awareness of the need for a distinctive ‘Made in Italy’ brand, partly for the global and highly competitive market that is the internet.””Despite this important milestone, we still have a lot of work to do; in our country there is limited awareness of the importance of having a domain name, and the Registry is going to strengthen partnerships with key Italian social and economic associations and organizations in order to help reduce the digital divide in Italy.”To support companies’ process of digitisation through the use of Italian domains, the .it Registry has created a communication project, “Made in .it”, as part of a publishing partnership with the Sole24ore’s Nòva24.
Following Brexit, Future Of Hundreds Of Thousands Of British-Registered Domains In Doubt
The future of hundreds of thousands of domain names are in doubt following the UK’s “Brexit” referendum where Britons decided to leave the European Union. The TLD to be most impacted is .eu which has 294,000 registrations to individuals and companies in the UK out of a total of 3.82 million registrations, according to the latest EURid quarterly report. Along with .eu, .it and .fr among others require registrants to be based in the European Union or from the European Economic Area.The future of these domain names has been addressed in a discussion paper published by the German internet association, eco, called “Brexit – Challenges for the Domain Industry?“.So assuming the Brexit happens in a few years, what happens to the affected domain names? And also to the registrars in other European countries who have customers based in the UK?The eco discussion paper notes there has already been a change in behaviour with registrars observing a drop-off in registration numbers.”With our paper and the opening of a discussion forum, we would like to contribute to making the impact of Brexit clear and understandable for companies and customers, as well as – on the basis of expert knowledge – contributing towards the rapid creation of legal certainty for all those involved,” said lawyer Thomas Rickert, Leader of the eco Names & Numbers Forum.Looking to the future the paper presents five options for how the problem is likely to be addressed. They also take into consideration that a bilateral agreement between the EU and the UK could potentially be made that includes domain registrations and prevents an interim depletion in registrations. The options are a suspension of registrations ordered by the European Commission, a grandfathering for existing registrations, all registrations could be revoked, the use of proxy registration services and finally, that the UK stays in the European Economic Area. Stay tuned!To download the eco paper, Brexit – Challenges for the Domain Industry?, in full, go to:
https://numbers.eco.de/wp-content/blogs.dir/21/files/20160729_brexit_challenges_for_the_domain_industry.pdf
ccTLD Updates: .DE, .EU, .IE, .RO, .IT and .DK
DENIC is warning .de domain registrants of German-language emails coming from the forged email address of info@denic.de. The emails claim to acknowledging a domain transfer and have the subject “DENIC eG â Domain-Transfer Bestätigung”. DENIC is advising the emails have nothing to do with them and contain a ZIP file that contains malware.
EURid currently has open the .eu Web Awards. The awards are an online competition where .eu and .eÑ websites can be nominated for a chance to win a prestigious award to be presented at a stunning ceremony in Brussels.
There are numerous categories including âThe Better Worldâ, for ecologically minded websites, and âThe Laurelsâ, for websites that promote ongoing education/Pan-European projects. For more information see webawards.eurid.eu.
The IE Domain Registry has published their annual report for 2015. The report includes a large amount of information for those interested in .ie stats, such as there were 35,225 new .ie registrations in 2015, an increase of 13.4 percent when compared to 2014 (31,072). Accounting for .ie non-renewals or deletions, there was a net increase in registrations of 12,929, an increase of 48 percent on 2014 net registrations.
Turnover increased five percent to â¬2.86 million. The company registered an operating loss of â¬517,082 in 2015. The loss is principally accounted for as a result of expenditure of â¬508,000 on activities under the companyâs Strategic Development Fund.
Commencing on 6 July, .ro domain registrants have the option of signing their domain names with DNSSEC the Romanian registry RO TLD has announced.
And get ready for the three millionth .it domain name under management. During May and June there were around 20,000 new .it domain names added to the base meaning they are 40,000 registrations short of the three million milestone. The .it is the ninth largest ccTLD.
Have you ever wondered about what the .dk registry should do about severe violations and misuse of .dk domain names? If so, DIFO invites you to participate in the consultation that extends over the Danish summer.
On 6 June, DIFO held a successful hearing which started a debate about when a domain name can be suspended, how the registrant is validated and what personal information DIFO may pass on.
A large number of representatives from the Danish internet community, from government authorities and the Copenhagen Police to a wide range of IT suppliers participated.
Issues to be considered include should the process of suspending a domain name become faster than it is today? One proposal is to create a special suspension board with responsibility for the suspension of domain names. Can you thereby ensure efficient treatment of cases of evident crime on Danish domain names? What about the legal certainty?
DIFOâs validation of the identity of registrants behind a domain name is currently carried out by letter but perhaps the current validation model should be tightened up? A more restrictive solution with forced NemID validation for Danes and an activation code by post for foreign registrants gained great support at the oral hearing. However there were strong voices against increased control and concerns that domain registration will become too difficult for the customers.
Should DIFO disclose information about anonymous registrants to authorities and individuals quicker and easier than today? DIFO looks forward to see the right holders participate in the written hearing.
2015 CENTR Awards finalists revealed
[news release] CENTR today announced the shortlisted candidates in each of the five categories of the 2015 CENTR Awards, which aim at highlighting ccTLD registry projects, teams and people that are making a difference in the industry.
Marketing category:
⢠AustriaLoves.at – “Darlinks” of the nation, NIC.AT (.at)
⢠Domain Pirates campaign, IIS (.se)
⢠âWithout a name it remains a dreamâ campaign, Registro.it
Corporate and Social Responsibility (CSR) category:
⢠OPTIMISE Fund, IEDR (.ie)
⢠Browse in Catalan, Fundació PuntCAT (.cat)
⢠Community Investment Program, CIRA (.ca)
Research and Development (R&D) category:
⢠Zonemaster by Afnic and .IIS (.fr, .se)
⢠Knot DNS by CZ.NIC (.cz)
⢠turing by Nominet (.uk)
Security category:
⢠Rapid adoption of DNSSEC, Norid (.no)
⢠Collaboration on auditing the ISO27001 ISMS, Christa Falkensammer (SWITCH [.ch]), Boban Krsic (DENIC [.de]) and Christian Proschinger (NIC.AT [.at])
⢠Turris Project, CZ.NIC (.cz)
Contributor of the Year category:
⢠Lise Fuhr (DK Hostmaster, .dk) and Mathieu Weill (Afnic, .fr) (combined nomination)
⢠CZ.NIC (Registry as a whole)
⢠Marcos Sanz (DENIC, .de)
⢠Kristof Tuyteleers (DNS Belgium, .be)
All shortlisted nominations in the first four categories were forwarded to Jury members, who have until 18 September to submit their choices. âThis shortlist is very promisingâ, says Carolina Aguerre, LACTLD General Manager and Chair of the 2015 CENTR Awards Jury. âWe really look forward to diving into the details of each project.â
This year, the CENTR community will also be voting for the Contributor of the Year Award. Votes are open to full and associate CENTR members, with one ballot per member.
The winners this year’s edition will be announced at the 2015 CENTR Awards Ceremony in Brussels on 7 October.
Congratulations to all participants!
This CENTR news release was sourced from:
https://centr.org/news/centr-awards/08-25-2015/4343/2015-centr-awards-finalists-revealed
Two Six-Figure Domain Sales Close Out 2014
The sale of 345.com and rides.com for $800,000 and $120,000 respectively topped the last Domain Name Journal chart for 2014. The domains were sold by MostWantedDomains and Flippa.
Coming in third was tv.ae, selling for $95,000, and fourth was wohnung.de selling for â¬74,000 ($87,320), both through Sedo to round out the top reported sales for the two weeks ending 4 January 2015.
There was also a nice internationalised domain name sale (schlüsseldienst.de), which sold for â¬35,000 ($41,300) while alqabas.com sold for KWD11,000 (Kuwaiti Dinar – $37,400) through KuwaitNET.
There were also a few more notable ccTLD sales. Dieta.it sold for â¬39,240 ($46,303) through Nidoma, lotto.ph sold for $25,000 through Sedo and jobs.se sold for â¬15,990 ($18,868) also through Sedo.
Overall there were 31 .com sales in the top 40, given the chart was for two weeks as well as two .de sales and one each for .ae, .it, .ph, .org, .se, .net and .nl.
In the aftermarket side of things, there were18 sales through Sedo and 13 sales through NameJet.
To check out the Domain Name Journal list of top reported sales for the fortnight to 4 January, go to: dnjournal.com/archive/domainsales/2014/20150114.htm
2 Million .IT Domains While .CN Registrations Continue To Plummet
The Italian ccTLD, .IT, has passed the two million active registrations mark this week with there being 2,001,192 registrations as of today.The registry has announced that in the past five years, the number of .IT domains has doubled with .IT remaining the fifth largest ccTLD in Europe after .DE (Germany) who has 13,905,243 registrations, .UK (United Kingdom – 8,802,095) and .NL (The Netherlands – 4,094,078) while .EU (European Union) has 3,285,310. All registration figures are as of 22 October.Overall, .COM is the largest TLD with just over 90 million registrations, .NET with close to 13.4 million, .ORG closing in on 8.8 million and .INFO with more than 7 million registrations according to recent registration figures.The Chinese ccTLD, .CN, has declined markedly in recent months and as of 30 September had 6,047926 registrations, down from 14,082,553 at the end of February 2009. There has not been an increase in .CN registration figures since February 2009, likely to be due to a change in identity requirements at registration and increases in pricing.