Entries tagged with “uk” from Domains / Internet Technology News - DNS News
2010 is the year that .com celebrates 25 years, but it's also the year the .uk marks a quarter of a century.
Over 25 years the .uk namespace has grown and grown to become one of the most widely used addresses on the internet outside of .com
The growth pattern is quite interesting.
During the first 11 years only 26 thousand domains were registered. One million names were in the zone by February 2000, which then grew to 5 million by 2006.
There are currently over 8.5 million .uk domains!
If you're a fan of statistics you can see the latest numbers from the registry here
Over 25 years the .uk namespace has grown and grown to become one of the most widely used addresses on the internet outside of .com
The growth pattern is quite interesting.
During the first 11 years only 26 thousand domains were registered. One million names were in the zone by February 2000, which then grew to 5 million by 2006.
There are currently over 8.5 million .uk domains!
If you're a fan of statistics you can see the latest numbers from the registry here
Nominet, the registry that handled the UK namespace, has announced that the 8 millionth domain has been registered.
The domain in question was lambethsuperhomes.org.uk, which was registered for a company in London.
Impressive growth figures!
However all of this positive news could be overshadowed by the "elephant in the room" - the Digital Economy Bill.
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The domain in question was lambethsuperhomes.org.uk, which was registered for a company in London.
Impressive growth figures!
However all of this positive news could be overshadowed by the "elephant in the room" - the Digital Economy Bill.
The UK's Advertising Standards Authority has upheld a number of complaints brought against Domain Registry of America (DROA).
In a recent ruling the UK regulator's decision includes responses from DROA and is worth reading.
The complaint centred around three complaints:
Three recipients believed the mailing was misleading because it appeared to be a bill requiring payment and implied they had transferred a domain name registration when they had not.
No surprise there.
Their reply, however, should raise a few eyebrows:
Domain Renewal Group (DRG) said their mailing was intended to notify recipients that their domain name was about to expire and, because of deregulation in the Domain Name industry, consumers had a choice of registrars with whom to renew or register a domain name. They said their mailing did not claim that the recipient's domain name had been transferred to DRG or that payment was due without agreeing to move to their company. They believed this was clear from the claims "Domain name holders are not obligated to renew their domain name with their current Registrar or with the Domain Renewal Group", "Review our prices and decide for yourself. You are under no obligation to pay the amounts stated below, unless you accept this offer" and "This notice is not a bill, it is rather an easy means of payment should you decide to switch your domain name registration to the Domain Renewal Group".
The ASA didn't believe their explanation:
The ASA noted the mailing was headed "Domain Name Expiration Notice" and closely resembled a bill, including a credit card payment slip, and considered recipients were likely to infer that their domain name had been transferred to DRG and a renewal payment was now required. We noted the mailing stated "This notice is not a bill ...", "You are under no obligation to pay the amounts stated below ..." and "... now is the time to transfer and renew your name from your current Registrar to the Domain renewal Group ...", but did not consider it was sufficient to remove the overall impression that the mailing was a genuine bill requiring payment. We concluded that the mailing was misleading for falsely implying that recipients had already transferred their domain name to DRG and for not making sufficiently clear that it was a marketing communication
What does this mean for DROA?
Unfortunately very little, as the ASA does not have a huge amount of power, nor does its counterpart in any other country, at least not to my knowledge.
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In a recent ruling the UK regulator's decision includes responses from DROA and is worth reading.
The complaint centred around three complaints:
Three recipients believed the mailing was misleading because it appeared to be a bill requiring payment and implied they had transferred a domain name registration when they had not.
No surprise there.
Their reply, however, should raise a few eyebrows:
Domain Renewal Group (DRG) said their mailing was intended to notify recipients that their domain name was about to expire and, because of deregulation in the Domain Name industry, consumers had a choice of registrars with whom to renew or register a domain name. They said their mailing did not claim that the recipient's domain name had been transferred to DRG or that payment was due without agreeing to move to their company. They believed this was clear from the claims "Domain name holders are not obligated to renew their domain name with their current Registrar or with the Domain Renewal Group", "Review our prices and decide for yourself. You are under no obligation to pay the amounts stated below, unless you accept this offer" and "This notice is not a bill, it is rather an easy means of payment should you decide to switch your domain name registration to the Domain Renewal Group".
The ASA didn't believe their explanation:
The ASA noted the mailing was headed "Domain Name Expiration Notice" and closely resembled a bill, including a credit card payment slip, and considered recipients were likely to infer that their domain name had been transferred to DRG and a renewal payment was now required. We noted the mailing stated "This notice is not a bill ...", "You are under no obligation to pay the amounts stated below ..." and "... now is the time to transfer and renew your name from your current Registrar to the Domain renewal Group ...", but did not consider it was sufficient to remove the overall impression that the mailing was a genuine bill requiring payment. We concluded that the mailing was misleading for falsely implying that recipients had already transferred their domain name to DRG and for not making sufficiently clear that it was a marketing communication
What does this mean for DROA?
Unfortunately very little, as the ASA does not have a huge amount of power, nor does its counterpart in any other country, at least not to my knowledge.
Nominet has officially launched ENUM.
Nominet sent an email to its registrars earlier today making the announcement official, although much of the marketing collateral had been on the Nominet site since yesterday (if not earlier).
Further information on Enum in the UK may be found on the Nominet site.
Nominet sent an email to its registrars earlier today making the announcement official, although much of the marketing collateral had been on the Nominet site since yesterday (if not earlier).
Further information on Enum in the UK may be found on the Nominet site.
The UK registry has now hit the seven million names registered.
You may recall them hitting six million names in July of last year, which means (obviously) that they've added over one million names in just over a year.
tootsdrivingschool.co.uk was the 7 millionth domain.
More on this story on the Nominet site
You may recall them hitting six million names in July of last year, which means (obviously) that they've added over one million names in just over a year.
tootsdrivingschool.co.uk was the 7 millionth domain.
More on this story on the Nominet site
Nominet has been working on developing and improving their "online services" over the past year.
The "online services" are available to both registrants and registrars and allow both user types to manage various aspects of their interactions with the UK registry.
Next month the registry plans to take the domain transfers / trades online.
The announcement may be found on their site here
Unfortunately details on how this is going to be implemented haven't been supplied as yet, but based on past experiences it could be another case of "all or nothing" with the offline form based solution being removed entirely, which leads to a new set of issues for registrants and their agents.
We'll have to wait and see.
The "online services" are available to both registrants and registrars and allow both user types to manage various aspects of their interactions with the UK registry.
Next month the registry plans to take the domain transfers / trades online.
The announcement may be found on their site here
Unfortunately details on how this is going to be implemented haven't been supplied as yet, but based on past experiences it could be another case of "all or nothing" with the offline form based solution being removed entirely, which leads to a new set of issues for registrants and their agents.
We'll have to wait and see.
There must be something in the air. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but there are a lot of things going on in the ccTLD world at the moment.
In the UK Nominet's AGM is being held this week. This would normally provoke a yawn from most people - it's an AGM - how exciting can that be? This year's AGM looks like it could be quite entertaining, although it probably isn't going to be particularly beneficial for its membership.
Over the last few weeks the private members' mailing list has been a veritable battleground. While some "healthy" discussion prior to an AGM and the election of various people might be expected, the activity over the past few weeks has gone from the sublime to the absolutely insane.
It seems to have all started shortly after the PAB election results were announced, though anyone trying to follow the tit for tat bickering may be excused for not being able to provide a concise timeline.
The board election debacle came to a head a few days ago when Nominet issued a warning to its members about their voting in the AGM. This of course led to even more debate and back and forth, which has probably confused quite a few people. There is, of course, a discussion (or two) on Acorn Domains.
A lot of the "action" seems to centre around "resolution 6", which members are meant to vote on at the AGM. The more vocal members seem to have split into two camps. You can read the opposing views here and here.
At the same time as some of Nominet's members are involved in a catfight the new gTLDs, which ICANN are supposedly introducing, came into the public eye again, with a new dotEng campaign being launched. I already mentioned the Scottish campaign for a .sco.
In Ireland the IEDR, which is the body responsible for the IE ccTLD, was subject to an external audit before Christmas. While the Irish Communications regulator (Comreg) had made promises of delivering a report to both stakeholders and the public nothing has been forthcoming to date. In the same period the Irish ccTLD topped the 100k name mark.
Over in France AFNIC is coming under fire, as the French communications regulator has opened up a consultation on who should be managing the French ccTLD and related entities that cater for the DOMTOM. It's an odd move on the French government's part, as AFNIC has always had state representation. Could we see .fr being run by a non-French company?
AFNIC are being quite gracious about the whole affair and issued a statement welcoming the process earlier this week, but who is to know what is going on behind closed doors...
And if that wasn't enough Denmark's ccTLD, .dk, is also coming under scrutiny. The dotDK group is tendering to run the registry, as they feel that the current system is far from ideal. Having dealt with DK Hostmaster's rather convoluted domain activation system I can't really argue with them!
What makes the dotDK project interesting for ICANN watchers is that Tina Dam, who has been working for ICANN for the last few years, is one of the main people involved. Francesco's article covers some of this in more detail.
And you thought ICANN was exciting?
In the UK Nominet's AGM is being held this week. This would normally provoke a yawn from most people - it's an AGM - how exciting can that be? This year's AGM looks like it could be quite entertaining, although it probably isn't going to be particularly beneficial for its membership.
Over the last few weeks the private members' mailing list has been a veritable battleground. While some "healthy" discussion prior to an AGM and the election of various people might be expected, the activity over the past few weeks has gone from the sublime to the absolutely insane.
It seems to have all started shortly after the PAB election results were announced, though anyone trying to follow the tit for tat bickering may be excused for not being able to provide a concise timeline.
The board election debacle came to a head a few days ago when Nominet issued a warning to its members about their voting in the AGM. This of course led to even more debate and back and forth, which has probably confused quite a few people. There is, of course, a discussion (or two) on Acorn Domains.
A lot of the "action" seems to centre around "resolution 6", which members are meant to vote on at the AGM. The more vocal members seem to have split into two camps. You can read the opposing views here and here.
At the same time as some of Nominet's members are involved in a catfight the new gTLDs, which ICANN are supposedly introducing, came into the public eye again, with a new dotEng campaign being launched. I already mentioned the Scottish campaign for a .sco.
In Ireland the IEDR, which is the body responsible for the IE ccTLD, was subject to an external audit before Christmas. While the Irish Communications regulator (Comreg) had made promises of delivering a report to both stakeholders and the public nothing has been forthcoming to date. In the same period the Irish ccTLD topped the 100k name mark.
Over in France AFNIC is coming under fire, as the French communications regulator has opened up a consultation on who should be managing the French ccTLD and related entities that cater for the DOMTOM. It's an odd move on the French government's part, as AFNIC has always had state representation. Could we see .fr being run by a non-French company?
AFNIC are being quite gracious about the whole affair and issued a statement welcoming the process earlier this week, but who is to know what is going on behind closed doors...
And if that wasn't enough Denmark's ccTLD, .dk, is also coming under scrutiny. The dotDK group is tendering to run the registry, as they feel that the current system is far from ideal. Having dealt with DK Hostmaster's rather convoluted domain activation system I can't really argue with them!
What makes the dotDK project interesting for ICANN watchers is that Tina Dam, who has been working for ICANN for the last few years, is one of the main people involved. Francesco's article covers some of this in more detail.
And you thought ICANN was exciting?
Nominet has been awarded the contract to run the Tier 1 registry for ENUM services in the UK (+44).
ENUM is slowly gaining ground across the EU and elsewhere, as it allows for the convergence of telephony with IP services.
ENUM is slowly gaining ground across the EU and elsewhere, as it allows for the convergence of telephony with IP services.
According to several reports UK registrar and hosting company UK Reg has been experiencing intermittent issues.
More details are available here and here
The company issued a statement to explain what happened:
More details are available here and here
The company issued a statement to explain what happened:
123-reg experienced intermittent performance issues on its DNS servers between late afternoon on Friday 16 November and Sunday 18 November. This meant that some customers have encountered difficulties with their domain names during this period.
This problem was caused by a combination of excessive loading on the DNS servers and a rare hardware failure. During this time, 123-reg engineers have replaced the hardware and full service has been resumed.
We apologise to our customers for the inconvenience that the outage would have caused and we have begun an investigation to identify the cause of the failure, and any necessary actions required will be implemented without delay. Further information and updates is available from http://www.hosting-status.pipex.net
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