CIRA, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, is the official registry operator of the .CA country code Top-Level-Domain. Last week HEXONET had the opportunity to attend the annual CIRA Symposium and Annual General Meeting this year held in Vancouver, British Columbia.

The General Meeting was very well attended.  Many updates and metrics on growth of .CA were announced, as well as, some of the new initiatives that the Registry has been working on.  Two highlights of the conference had to be the two keynote speakers, Jonathan Zittrain, considered the foremost authority on the future of the Internet and Stewart Butterfield, co-founder of Flickr, the popular photosharing website.

Some of the Highlights of the Meeting Include:

• .CA is experiencing very healthy annual growth at a rate of 14%, together with a renewal rate of 79%
• There are now more than 1.6 million .CA domains registered
• CIRA is the fastest growing ccTLD registry in the world
• .CA and .COM comparative Canadian market share analysis – .CA has grown its market share to 29% while .COM has decreased down to 56%
• Last year, CIRA successfully completed a major milestone with the launch of an entirely new EPP registry system.  The industry standard EPP-based system, ensures reliability, as well as, greater security and added robustness.
• CIRA is evaluating the implementation of French character Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) – a special website for feedback from key stakeholders has already been setup.
• CIRA’s current Canadian Presence Requirements (CPR) to register a .CA domain will be reviewed at the next CIRA board meeting in December 2011.

The Value of Being a CIRA Member:

Membership in CIRA is free and is open to anyone who holds a .CA domain.  Currently there are over 15,000 members. And the most important privilege of CIRA membership is that it gives you the opportunity to influence the CIRA registry.  It is through membership that anyone can get involved in CIRA’s governance and direction by either lobbying to its Board or even vying for a position at a Board of Directors Elections (which is happening this week!).

Members also have opportunities to influence the direction and rules of the registry through member surveys, as well as, direct member consultation (like the IDN discussion).  The fascinating part of being an active CIRA member is that your efforts not only go into influencing CIRA, but also the worldwide Internet via CIRA’s involvement with other international Internet organizations. Moreover, active CIRA members have access to the Registry’s quarterly e-newsletter and are also invited to CIRA sponsored networking and business development opportunities.

CIRA membership is very unique in the domain industry as very few registries actually follow this methodology.  However, the Registry feels that it is only through membership that the Registry can operate in the best interests of its users.  CIRA best sums up membership as such, “If your domain is your storefront on the Internet’s digital village, CIRA is CA’s Town Council. Being a .CA member gives you a voice in influencing and electing the Council. No other organization represents Canadians on the Internet like CIRA. .CA membership gives you access to that community.”

HEXONET would like to thank the entire team at CIRA for their continued dedication to fostering the development of .CA and building up this key Canadian public resource.  Thank you for your leadership role in shaping Canada’s Internet.

If you are a .CA domain holder, we encourage you to evaluate the benefits of becoming an ACTIVE CIRA member today.

The popularity of backordering valuable domain names as they expire is driving more customers to use HEXONET’s backorder service. Eighteen (18) TLD extensions can be backordered now including .CO, .CA, .CH, .LI, and .NU.

Vancouver, Canada (PRWEB) August 01, 2011.  HEXONET (http://www.hexonet.net) announced today the addition of five more Top-Level-Domain (TLD) extensions for its popular backorder service. The launch of .CO, .CA, .CH, .LI, and .NU backordering expands HEXONET’s backorder service to eighteen (18) different TLDs, making it a leader in terms of TLD selection anywhere industry-wide. HEXONEThas plans to expand its backorderable TLDs even more in the months ahead.

HEXONET’s mandate to continually innovate and quickly deliver new services to the growing domain aftermarket is showcased in the release of these five new backorder TLDs. Backordering services for .CO domains for instance comes on the heels of HEXONET’s recent accreditation with the .CO registry just a month earlier. Even development of .CO backordering was expedited to give HEXONET customers the greatest opportunity to snap up prized expiring .CO domains that are likely to drop following .CO’s first anniversary. Many excellent .CO domains are expected to become available.

According to Robert Birkner, Chief Strategy Officer of HEXONET, “our strength has always been engineering and innovation, and in the first half of 2011, we have been in overdrive.” Robert Birkner continued to say, “Though we are always working on adding more TLDs to the backordering service, we have also been innovating new services like integrated private auctions. These private auctions make allocating domains with multiple bidders more equitable, transparent and seamless for everyone. The feedback from our customers and resellers has already been overwhelmingly positive. Customers love the abundance of TLDs to backorder from as well as the assurance of private auctions through our auction platform Premiumsale.com.”

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.