When the government talks about “critical national infrastructure”, for most of us it brings to mind images of guarded nuclear facilities, choked railways and failing banks. But now, on a business park on the outskirts of Oxford, a keystone of the modern economy is the subject of an increasingly bitter power struggle that could trigger a Whitehall power grab at the independent heart of the UK internet.Nominet is the not-for-profit company founded in 1996 to run the UK internet registry, when demand for domain names soared. Every time we click a link or type a web address containing .co.uk, .org.uk and other UK-centric suffixes we’re connected to the correct website thanks to Nominet’s database. In August, it celebrated registering its its seven millionth domain name, for a driving school in Ilford.To read this story in full in The Guardian, see www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/nov/20/nominet-domain-name-registry.
UK registry, Nominet, faces split
When the government talks about “critical national infrastructure”, for most of us it brings to mind images of guarded nuclear facilities, choked railways and failing banks. But now, on a business park on the outskirts of Oxford, a keystone of the modern economy is the subject of an increasingly bitter power struggle that could trigger a Whitehall power grab at the independent heart of the UK internet.