Registration for the 2022 Nordic Domain Days to be held in Stockholm in May 2022 has opened. The conference that focusses on the domain name industry in the five Nordic countries – Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland, and let’s not forget the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Åland as well, is aimed as a means of discussing domain name issues for the Nordic region, and is aimed at registries, registrars, resellers, service providers and investors.
Domain name registrations in Portugal’s ccTLD grew by over one fifth in 2020, with a new record of 96,715 new registrations in .pt, 18,020 more than in 2019, which represents a growth of 22.9% and makes 2020 the best ever.
DNS.PT has been active in recent weeks with a few announcements about a new mobile phone app, conclusion of KSK and ZSK rollover and joining the Portuguese National Cybersecurity Centre anti-piracy campaign. They have also joined an initiative with the Portuguese National Cybersecurity Center (CNCS-PT) to promote a more secure Portuguese internet.
2018 was the best year ever for the Portuguese ccTLD as it celebrates 30 years of .pt, a record number of new registrations and passing the one million registrations mark. And 2019 has gotten off to a great start as they announce the signing of a protocol of collaboration with the Angolan government regarding the management of their .ao.
To celebrate the 30 years of .pt, the DNS.PT Association organised a conference in November called “The Internet is a Strange Place”, which took place on November 29 at the Jerónimo Martins Auditorium, Nova SBE, Carcavelos.
Then in early January 2019 there were 2 announcements. The first was that by new registrations, it was the best year ever for the Portuguese country code top level domain with a total of 107,850 new .pt domain names registered.
The Portuguese ccTLD is one of the faster growing in European: year after year, the number of .pt registrations increases significantly. DNS.PT note .pt is in the top 5 of the European domains.
.pt passed the one million registrations mark in March 2018 and today has 1.093 million domains under management. In the 10 years since the end of 2008 registrations have shown constant growth, growing from 248,000.
The second announcement this month was DNS.PT Association signing a protocol of collaboration with the Ministry of Telecommunications and Information Technology of Angola (MTTI), which aims to support the ongoing process of restructuring management of the Angolan ccTLD, .ao, as well as develop technical and legal training actions that enhance the development of skills in the area of ccTLD management and the internet in general. Angola is another Portuguese-speaking country.
The collaboration protocol was signed by Luisa Gueifão, chairman of the DNS.PT Association Board of Directors, and Manuel Gomes da Conceição Homem, Secretary of State for Information Technologies of MTTI on 11 January in Lisbon in a ceremony during which the importance of the relationship between the two entities was reinforced
The Portuguese ccTLD .pt had its best quarter ever in the first quarter of 2018 with 44,782 new domain names registered, while April continued the impressive registration figures with 9,010 new registrations, one of the best months in recent years.
The results took .pt registrations past the 1.1 million registrations mark and according to DNS.PT, this growth is the result of âan associative and multiparticipated governance modelâ with the government, consumers, registrars and academy all participating allowing for a more efficient, flexible and inclusive management of the Internet community in Portugal. DNS.PT also notes Portuguese people and businesses have shown a greater preference for their own country code top level domain.
According to Luisa Gueifão, Chairman of the DNS.PT Association’s Board of Directors, the results show the commitment of the Association DNS.PT in the management, maintenance and registration of the national top-level domain. “Since Associação DNS.PT assumed the role of the Portuguese ccTLD registry, .PT has been one of the three fastest growing domains in Europe. Last year the growth was 12% compared to the European scenario of 4%, so the good performance and experience makes DNS.PT a reference that serves as a model and inspiration for many other European countries”.
Luisa Gueifão also highlights the role that Association DNS.PT has been playing in the promotion of the Internet and the digital economy in Portugal. “Our focus is increasingly directed to digital skills programs. We have created and supported numerous projects that contribute to the increase of the digital literacy levels and to combat info-exclusion and digital divide. It is fundamental to think about the Internet without forgetting the people”.
The Dutch and Austrian ccTLD managers, SIDN and nic.at, have signed a cooperation agreement under which all domains managed by SIDN will additionally be hosted on the nic.at anycast network RcodeZero DNS. The agreement was announced by SIDN’s CEO Roelof Meijer and nic.at CEO Richard Wein on the sidelines of the ICANN meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
“We are very happy and proud to offer our technical services to the third largest European ccTLD,” says Richard Wein, CEO of nic.at. The agreement covers the almost 6 million domains registered under .nl, .amsterdam, .aw and .politie and sees SIDN becoming the biggest customer of the RcodeZero TLD DNS network. A network which already hosts twelve different TLDs at thirteen highly available redundant locations all over the world.
Roelof Meijer, SIDN’s CEO, explains the reasons why they decided for RcodeZero DNS: “First of all, it was important for us to have a partner under EU jurisdiction and data protection law. Secondly, we were impressed by nic.at’s technical know-how and flexibility, as well as their readiness to develop their product further based on our needs.” In recent years, SIDN has constantly been improving and optimising its DNS infrastructure with anycast partners to guarantee the best possible availability of .nl domains.
RcodeZero DNS will soon be expanded with additional nodes in Australia and South America to provide better performance and lower latency for customers in those areas, too. However, RcodeZero DNS, had other attractions for a technician, as confirmed by Marc Groeneweg, Coordinator of DNS Ops Team at SIDN: “It’s important for us to have comprehensive statistics and real-time DNS traffic information to further analyse our infrastructure, as a basis for continued improvement of our infrastructure.“
The technical work of integrating all Dutch domains into the network has just been completed and the set-up is now ready for public production.
The agreement is a sign of further consolidation and expansion within the top level domain registry industry, using their experiences in areas such as security among others. In the security area, a big issue for business worldwide, the domain name business is one of the leading providers of online security solutions. Some registries, such as nic.at and SWITCH, the Swiss registry operator, also run CERTs.
Others, such as CIRA, the Canadian ccTLD manager, has been active in recent months signing agreements with Uniregistry, DNS.PT (Portugal’s .pt) and InternetNZ (New Zealand’s .nz) to provide global domain name system services. SIDN itself has acquired a controlling stake in Connectis, one of the Netherlands' leading suppliers of secure log-in solutions and redesigned SPIN, their open-source system for protecting the internet and end-users against insecure IoT devices in home networks. And DENIC, the German (.de) ccTLD manager, has been approved as an authorised New gTLD Data Escrow Agent to offer both to ICANN-accredited registrars and registries an escrow service which fully complies with the European legal framework.
The number of domain names under Portugalâs ccTLD, .pt, passed the one millionth registration mark, DNS.PT announced Tuesday.
The domain name nominated to be the one the one that saw registrations tick past the one millionth was meckos.pt, registered by Meckos, an industrial textile machinery, based in Fafe.
2017 was one of the best years ever for the Portuguese country code top level domain with an additional 100,891 domain names registered and so far in 2018 there have been more than 23,000 domain names registered under .pt. In January, for example, 10,693 new domain names were registered, a growth of 30% compared to the same period last year.
With the international delegation completed in 1988, the first domain name registered was dns.pt. Since 2013, the date of the establishment of the DNS.PT Association, .PT has been one of the three fastest growing ccTLDs in Europe.
Within a framework of growth and innovation, the DNS.PT Association has also been playing an important role in boosting the internet, digital skills, inclusion of citizens and businesses and digital economy in Portugal by supporting projects, initiatives and entities associated with the internet in general.
By the end of 2017 there were 976,370 .pt domain names registered, an increase of 100,891 in the year, the Portuguese ccTLD Registry Association DNS.PT announced yesterday.
The Portuguese country code top level domain has been growing more than the European average in recent years, always in the top 5 European countries for growth, according to CENTR statistics. In the first quarter of 2017, .pt was the fastest growing ccTLD.
Part of the reason for the growth the Association DNS.PT attributes to an inclusive and multi-stakeholder governance model that allows a more efficient, flexible and inclusive management of the various stakeholders.
The top level domain business continues to consolidate as registry operators look for partners to provide services rather than provide bespoke services every time. One of those registries that has recently been aggressive in seeking partners is CIRA, the registry operator for the Canadian ccTLD, who this week announced Uniregistry and SIDN have signed on to receive CIRAâs D-Zone DNS services for their TLDs.
Both partnerships were announced at the ICANN public meeting currently underway in Abu Dhabi and follows the announcement in February of two other joint ventures with the New Zealand and Portuguese ccTLD registries, InternetNZ and Associação DNS.PT, to deliver Anycast DNS services.
SIDN who manages the .nl country code top level domain (ccTLD) for the Netherlands, with more than 5.7 million domains under management, has itself been branching into other services. Speaking at the Domain Pulse conference in Vienna earlier this year SIDNâs Michiel Henneke said the registry has been experimenting with opportunities in similar areas.
âDNS is required for e-billing so SIDN became a co-creator of a DNS billing service in the Netherlands, but there are few other markets that are as attractive when it comes to revenue as domain names and the e-billing service is just a small part of revenue. Weâve also taken over an e-identity company with 12 million users, so we believe this will be a significant contributor to future revenue.â
Uniregistry, the other partner, operates .ky, the Cayman Islands ccTLD, along with 25 new generic top level in domains (gTLDs) in the global marketplace, including .link, .game, .mom and .photo.
The CIRA D-Zone Anycast DNS that the registries have signed up to use is built for resilience with a strong footprint at each node across a global, well-peered network that is recognized as best-in-class by some of the most discriminating buyers in the industry.
CIRAâs solution started with the needs of the .CA TLD at its heart, and is now finding great partners around the world who are committed to building a better internet for their users.
Establishing one or more secondary DNS footprints is considered an internet infrastructure best-practice that can help to mitigate the risks posed by DDoS that increasingly focus on DNS providers, where they can do the most damage. The DNS is fundamental to ensuring that websites, email, and web applications remain online and optimized for performance.
The Canadian ccTLD manager has announced two joint ventures this week with New Zealand and Portugal’s ccTLD registries to deliver Anycast DNS services.
The joint venture with New Zealand’s ccTLD augments .nz’s DNS infrastructure with a global network of nodes and peering to over 2,300 networks. As part of this deal, CIRA and NZRS will also be working together to build a new Pacific node for CIRA’s Anycast cloud.
“In selecting DNS hosting providers, NZRS looks for providers with deep DNS expertise who are committed to building a world class network and can provide a global reach for the .nz TLD,” said Jay Daley, CEO at NZRS Ltd. “In CIRA we see an organisation that not only amply demonstrated this but also shares our vision of building a better Internet.”
For the Portuguese ccTLD, CIRA’s D-Zone Anycast DNS instantly augments .pt’s DNS architecture, adding new global nodes and comprehensive global peering with over 2,300 networks.
CIRA’s D-Zone for TLDs service offers advanced query monitoring and reporting that enables ccTLDs to access packet capture (PCAP) data for expanded analysis and R&D projects.
D-Zone was built to sustain the performance and resiliency standards of the .CA domain name space, and as such is well-suited for modern ccTLD and gTLD businesses.
“The ccTLD community, and in particular .PT, is driven by a common objective of improving the global Internet and ensuring the safety and security of the global domain name system,” said Luisa Gueifão, Chair of the board of directors at Associação DNS.PT. “This partnership with CIRA give us an excellent tool to contribute to respond to new global cybersecurity threats, scaling our DNS architecture to meet the needs of a growing global domain name.”
These announcements follow news two weeks from DENIC the .de registry, that EURid was now its largest customer for the shared use of its global anycast mesh. DENIC now provides DNS slave services covering some 6.5m domains for seven TLD clients, in addition to running its own .de nameservice for more than 16.1m DUM, this way increasing its contribution for the security and stability of the Internet as a whole.
And they follow concerns by a number of ccTLD managers of where their next growth is to come from, a topic of discussion at the Domain Pulse conference in Vienna in February. Domain name registration growth has been fairly static for a few years now, as outlined in a CENTR report presented at the conference. So some country code top level domain registries are looking for new business opportunities outside their own market. SIDN, the .nl registry, has expanded by co-creating a DNS billing service in the Netherlands and taking over an e-identity company with 12 million users. Others, such as the Austrian ccTLD registry nic.at, have set up as new generic Top Level Domain registries
