As HEXONET’s primary foriegn office is based in Vancouver, Canada, we thought we would take the opportunity to share some insight on CIRA and the .CA ccTLD (country-code Top-Level Domain).

Overview:

• The .CA registry is operated by CIRA (Canadian Internet Registration Authority),  a not-for-profit corporation
• The .CA registry was created in 1987 by volunteers at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver.
• The registry was officially transferred to the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) on December 1, 2000.
• .CA domain names are reserved for Canadian persons, organizations and entities that meet CIRA’s Canadian Presence Requirements
• Whois privacy is enabled by default for domains registered to individuals (WHOIS privacy can be disabled through CIRA’s provided web portal).  Registrations by corporate entities are shown.
• There are now 1,457,488 .CA domains registered.

Trends & Future Outlook:

• In 2009, 27 per cent of all domain registrations in Canada where .CA, second only to .COM.
• The .CA registry has enjoyed considerable growth, in spite of the recent global economic woes, and between 2007 and 2009, .CA registrations grew by 16 per cent, significantly higher than the six per cent annual global growth rate of generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs). (Source: CIRA)
• The aftermarket for .CA domains continues to grow every year. For example, this summer, Poker.ca sold for $400,000.
• Some of the world’s largest domainers including Kevin Ham, Garry Chernoff and Frank Schilling hail from Vancouver.  The popular T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Domain Conference and Expo was recently held in Vancouver
• 2009 marked the launch of the DOAC (Domain Owners Association of Canada).  The the mission of the Domain Owners Association of Canada (DOAC) is to provide a collective voice for individuals and corporations in the Canadian domain industry including domain owners, registrars, domain parking providers, lawyers, advertising agencies and the media.
• CIRA has committed to the full deployment of DNSSEC, the security extensions for DNS, and has been conducting extensive research and analysis into the technical and operational impact of signing the .CA zone file. The roll-out is anticipated in the later part of 2011.

What Do you Think?
Currently, .CA domains names are reserved for Canadian persons, organizations and entities that meet CIRA’s Canadian Presence Requirements. With many large ccTLDs abolishing this requirement in recent years, do you think that CIRA should also remove these restrictions?  This week’s DomainNameWire features a guest article written my prominent domain name attorney Zak Muscovitch.  The article outlines his argument as to why the .CA ccTLD needs to be liberalized. We would like to hear your comments regarding this topic.

NASK, the registry operator of the .PL country-code Top-Level Domain, recently released its second quarter 2010 report on the state of the .PL registry. HEXONET would like to share some of the stats with you as well as some interesting facts about the .PL domain in general.

Overview:

The PL registry finished the second quarter with over 1,834, 726 .PL domains registered. This is on the heels of a record breaking first quarter for NASK.  Clearly, the popularity of .PL is growing domestically, regionally and even internationally. In fact, among the ten (10) largest European national registries, .PL is growing the fastest.  The .PL registry now only trails .IT (Italy) in terms of EU ccTLD rankings for total domains registered.

Annual Growth Rate of EU-based ccTLD Registries

Secondary Market:

The secondary domain market in Poland is has grown tremendously. Both Namedrive and Sedo are very active in this market as well as local players like Aftermarket.pl and Dropped.pl.  Even the lastest MeetDomainers European conference was held last week in Sopot, Poland.

With the this growing market, NASK is even providing tools and services for domain investors. Some of the Registry services include:

1. DNT (Domain Name Tasting) – Allows you to activate a new domain for a trial period of 14 days at a very low fee. During that period your domain is fully active on your DNS servers. DNT allows you to ‘test-drive’ your domain before you decide to buy it.
2. WLS (Wait List Services) – Gives the WLS holder the first right to register a domain name if the current subscriber cancels their registration and the domain becomes available within 3 years.
3. NASK Drop Lists – The Registry publishes free drop lists for domainers three times a day.

.PL at a Glance:
Available Domains: .pl (plus .com.pl, info.pl, net.pl, org.pl, info.pl, biz.pl)
Pricing:  View pricing
Requirements: Anyone can register a .PL domain
Registry: NASK
Registration Period: 1-10yrs.
IDN Capable: Yes

NIC.AT, the official registry of the country-code Top-Level-Domain of Austria, has recently released their second NIC.AT report.  In April, we featured a blog posting that provided the inaugural analysis and report of NIC.AT that many of you enjoyed. In this post, we would like to provide a summary of the second and newest report, including some very interesting trends and statistics.

Summary:

• The .AT ccTLD continues to be in high demand. As of July 1, 2010 the .AT zone had over 939,951 registered domains.  It is expected to reach the 1,000,000 milestone by the end of this year!  This is an impressive number considering that Austria does not have a huge population base.

• Among all registrants, private individuals register an equal share of .AT domains as businesses and organisations together. Just over half (53%) of all domains are held by legal entities such as businesses and organisations, with the remainder accounted for by private individuals.

• There is a strong appetite for .AT domains from abroad. According to NIC.AT, “Demand for .AT domains from Germany are undiminished, with almost 190,000 .AT domains currently registered with German owners. The .AT suffix is also proving increasing popular among the Swiss, and somewhat surprisingly, the English.”
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• .AT Registrations from Abroad
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• Holzhausen?  This tiny town in upper Austria with a population of 800 people is the domain capital of Austria. The number of domains registered outnumber the locals with an impressive 1.58  registered .AT domains per inhabitant.

• The report also covered the imminent introduction of new gTLDs  by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers). In fact, NIC.AT is leveraging their experience as a registry operator and now offers consulting services to applicants considering applying for a new gTLD. It also provides a Registry-in-a-box service to these applicants.

Why Register an .AT domain?

• If you run a business that operates in Austria or sells into Austria, an .AT is a must.
• Idioms: There is an increasing use of .AT domains to capitalize on catchy domain names that represent certain English expressions / idioms that feature ‘at’ at the end or include ‘at’ in the expression. For example, Form.at, Bureaucr.at  ‘good.at’, ‘targeted.at’, etc.  In fact, we came across the following US-based company that operates a free online  website builder for restaurants called letseat.at
• Austria does not limit the registration of .AT only to its citizens, but allows .AT domains to be registered by anyone worldwide.

Click here to access the entire NIC.AT report.