ICANN waves goodbye to Adobe Connect over security, pricing

ICANN has decided to dump its longstanding web conferencing service provider, Adobe Connect, in favor of rival Zoom.
The organization reckons it could save as much as $100,000 a year, and mitigate some security fears, by making the switch.
Adobe has been the standard remote participation tool for not only ICANN’s public meetings, but also its policy-development working groups, for at least seven or eight years.
It enables video, audio, screen-sharing, public and private chat, voting and so on. ICANN says that Zoom has “nearly all of the same features”.
But some of ICANN’s more secretive bodies — including the Security and Stability Advisory Committee and Board Operations — have been using Zoom for a little over a year, after an SSAC member discovered a vulnerability in Adobe that allowed potentially sensitive information to be stolen.
A clincher appears to be Zoom’s voice over IP functionality, which ICANN says will enable it to drop Premiere Global Services Inc (PGi), its current, $500,000-a-year teleconferencing provider, which participants use if they dial in from on the road.
“Based on feedback, Zoom’s voice connectivity and overall experience seem to be superior to equivalent Adobe Connect experiences,” ICANN said.
As somebody who has lurked on more than his fair share of Adobe Connect rooms, I’ve noticed that people losing their voice connection is a very common occurrence, which can delay and break the flow of discussions, though it’s not usually clear where the blame lies.
According to a Zoom feature list (pdf) provided by ICANN, Zoom currently lacks many features on its web client, but updates are expected to bring the feature set in line with the mobile apps and PC/Mac executables by the end of the year.
ICANN expects to use Zoom exclusively by ICANN 65, in Marrakech this June. In the meantime, it will provide training to community members.
The cynic in me wants to say “expect teething troubles”, but the ICANN meetings team runs a pretty tight ship. The switch might be surprisingly smooth.

Comment Tagged: adobe, adobe connect, ICANN, icann 65, zoom

Donuts raises prices on most TLDs by up to 9%

Portfolio registry Donuts is to jack up prices on most of its 241 gTLDs by up to 9% later this year.
Base-rate price increases of between 6% and 9% will his 220 TLDs, while 16 will remain at their current pricing.
The increases, which do not affect registry-reserved “premium” domains, will likely mean an increase of a few dollars in most cases.
(UPDATE: Donuts says the average price increase is about $1.75.)
Five gTLDs will see their prices reduced. Donuts said .group will see a 35% price reduction. It currently sells for about $30 a year at GoDaddy.
The prices were announced to registrars yesterday and, due to ICANN rules, will not come into effect until October 1.
Registrants are able to lock in their current pricing for up to 10 years by renewing before that deadline.

Comment Tagged: donuts, new gTLDs, prices

.com outsells new gTLDs by 2:1 in 2018

The number of registered .com domains increased by more than double the growth of all new gTLDs last year, according to figures from Verisign.
The latest Domain Name Industry Brief reports that .com grew by 7.1 million names in 2018, while new gTLDs grew by 3.2 million names.
.com ended the year with 139 million registered names, while the whole new gTLD industry finished with 23.8 million.
It wasn’t all good news for Verisign, however. Its .net gTLD shrunk by 500,000 names over the period, likely due to the ongoing impact of the new gTLD program.
New gTLDs now account for 6.8% of all registered domains, compared to 6.2% at the end of 2017, Verisign’s numbers state.
Country codes fared better than .com in terms of raw regs, growing by 8.2 million domains to finish 2018 with 154.3 million names.
But that’s including .tk, the free ccTLD where dropping or abusive domains are reclaimed and parked by the registry and never expire.
Excluding .tk, ccTLDs were up by 6.6 million names in the year. Verisign estimates .tk as having a modest 21.5 million names.
The latest DNIB, and quarterly archives, can be downloaded from here.

Comment Tagged: .com, cctlds, dnib, domain name industry brief, new gTLDs, verisign

CentralNic gets 680,000 AlpNames domains for free, kinda

CentralNic has emerged as the gaining registrar for AlpNames’ entire portfolio of gTLD domains.
The company announced late last week that three registrars in its stable — Moniker, Key-Systems LLC and Key-Systems GmbH — will take over roughly 680,000 domains that were left stranded when AlpNames management went AWOL.
US-based Key-Systems LLC appears to be the biggest gainer. It will be taking over domains in every gTLD except .biz, .com, .info, .net, .org, which are going to Moniker, and .pro, which are going to the German Key-Systems division.
While most registrars see their domains under management concentrated in these legacy gTLDs, by volume AlpNames had far more registrations in new 2012-round gTLDs.
It had just 19,000 .com DUM at the last count, compared to hundreds of thousands in new gTLDs such as .top and .gdn.
CentralNic said in a press release that ICANN selected its registrars after a competitive bidding process, which I’ve previously outlined here, but that it did not pay for the names. So AlpNames, presumably, won’t be getting the payday it could have received under the rules.
The transfer won’t be entirely cost-free, of course. CentralNic is going to have to provide support to its incoming customers — who will all be emailed with the details of their new Moniker accounts — for starters.
There’s also the issue of abuse. AlpNames was notorious as a haven for spammers and the like, due to its cheap prices and bulk-registration tools, so CentralNic may find itself having to deal with this legacy.
But CentralNic said it expects these incidental costs to be “minimal”.
The transfers are a big boost for CentralNic’s registrar volume, at least in the short term. The three selected registrars had a combined total of roughly two million gTLD domains at the last count. CentralNic says it acts as registrar for over seven million domains across its 13 accreditations.
For every AlpNames domain that gets renewed, CentralNic gets paid. But if AlpNames’ own track record is any guide, I suspect there’s going to be a lot of drops over the coming year.
UPDATE August 12 2020: AlpNames former CEO Iain Roache recently wrote to DI and stated the following:

Alpnames itself worked closely with ICANN for months to arrange for its exit from the Registrar business and with a number of Registrars to arrange for the transfer of the customers. Your article does not reflect the detail of what transpired and is inaccurate.

Comment Tagged: alpnames, centralnic, ICANN, key-systems, moniker

NameSilo nets $1.5 million profit

Fast-growing registrar NameSilo yesterday reported its financial results for 2018.
The Canadian company reported revenue of CDN 17.2 million ($13.3 million) for the year, up from CDN 10.4 million ($8.1 million) in 2017.
Net income was CDN 1.92 million ($1.48 million), compared to CDN 565,000 ($435,000).
Bookings were CDN 28.78 million ($21.45 million), up from CDN 14.04 million ($10.81 million) in 2017.
These are the results of NameSilo LLC, the operating registrar subsidiary of the listed entity, NameSilo Technologies Corp, which is listed on the Canadian pink sheets. The former reversed into the latter in August.
NameSilo says it has added 850,000 new domains under management since then, and now has about 2.7 million names.
According to the most-recent registry transaction reports, NameSilo was the second-fastest growing gTLD registrar in November and the 16th-largest by DUM. It ranks higher if you group registrar accreditations into families.

2 Comments Tagged: earnings, financials, namesilio

Registry offers “$2,500” in sweeteners for .inc registrants

The newly launching .inc gTLD may be eye-wateringly expensive, but the registry is offering a package of incentives it reckons adds up to a $2,500 value to new registrants.
Intercap Registry’s .inc went into sunrise today. It’s expected to have retail price of $2,000 and up when it goes to general availability May 7. Sunrise registrants can expect to pay a couple thousand more.
Given the high price, and the fact that many businesses that end in “Inc” will likely view it primarily as an opportunity to waste yet more cash on defensive registrations, I’ve always been a bit skeptical of this particular gTLD.
But I’ve got to give the registry credit for at least making an effort to bump up its value proposition.
It’s currently listing 17 freebies, provided mostly by partners, that new .inc registrants can cash in to soften the dent in their wallets.
Registrants can get a free business formation package from LegalZoom and a free press release announcing their new business issued on GlobalNewsWire, for example. Together, that’s worth over a grand, Intercap says.
Most of the other benefits on offer are discounts on services such as telephony, shared office space, printing, accounting, payment processing and advertising services. Some require additional spending before they can be cashed in.
Partners include Google, Ting, Delta Airlines, Vistaprint and Quickbooks. Some of the offers look like typical affiliate marketing deals.
I imagine different registrants will find different benefits appealing. Some may use none at all. Intercap says more sweeteners will be added in future.
The registry says that its high pricing is there to deter cybersquatters. I imagine this will be successful to a large extent, but that it will probably attract a healthy defensive registration business also.

Comment Tagged: .inc, intercap, launch, new gTLDs, sunrise

Most .uk registrants not interested in .uk

The majority of people eligible to register .uk domains at the second level have not yet chosen to do so, according to local registry Nominet.
Numbers the company released this week show that only two million 2LD .uk names have been registered since they first became available five years ago.
That’s despite the fact that the owners of over 10 million domains registered at the third level, such as under .co.uk or .org.uk, had exclusive rights to those names.
Today, the owners of 3.2 million .uk 3LDs have yet to exercise their grandfathered rights, Nominet said.
Those rights expire 0500 UTC June 25 this year.
Nominet plans to ramp up its outreach to affected registrants with radio, print and online ads in May, the company has previously told DI.
If you’re wondering why two million plus 3.2 million does not add up to 10 million, that’s because over the last five years about half of original 10 million domains with grandfathering rights have dropped.
Many will have been re-registered (which does not transfer the rights) or have been replaced with different fresh registrations, which is why Nominet’s total 3LDs under management has only declined from 10.4 million to 9.7 million since 2014.

3 Comments Tagged: .uk, nominet, second-level

Australia likely to BAN domaining

Domain investors will soon be no longer welcome in Australia’s .au, if proposed policy changes are approved.
Registrants who own more than 100 names and cannot prove they’re not a domainer will have their names deleted, under the recommendations of an Policy Review Panel appointed by Aussie ccTLD registry auDA this week.
The practice of vacuuming up domains for resale has long been against auDA policy, but the rules have been perceived as weak, easily worked around, and have been rarely enforced.
The current policy states: “A registrant may not register a domain name for the sole purpose of resale or transfer to another entity.”
But domainers have successfully argued that by parking their speculative domains, resale is no longer the “sole” purpose of the registration.
That loophole would be closed under the PRP’s recommendations. If approved by auDA, the rule would be changed to:

A registrant is prohibited from registering any open 2LD domain name for the primary purpose of (a) resale, (b) transfer to another entity, or (c) warehousing.

The PRP noted that it had received input “that registering domain names for resale increases the cost of doing business, increases the scarcity of names, and that registering domain names for the purpose of resale adds no real value to the internet name space.”
Registrants with 100-strong portfolios of “acronyms, dictionary words, or common phrases” would be singled out for review, as would registrants who are seen to engage in the resale of their domains.
Registrants who have “solicited the sale of the domain name or offered the domain name for sale to another for valuable consideration in excess of documented out-of-pocket costs” or who have sold more than six domains in six months, would also be presumed domainers.
Being found to be “warehousing”, domainers would no longer be eligible to their names.
They’d need to show “clear and convincing evidence” that the domain in question was not registered for resale in order to keep their names.
It’s a fairly comprehensive ban on domaining, in other words.
While there may well be workarounds — such as owning matching trademarks or selling shell companies rather than merely the domains — I can’t think of any that would wouldn’t be overly burdensome or costly in the vast majority of cases.
The PRP has also recommended the introduction of opening up .au to direct, second-level registrations, much like the UK, New Zealand and others have over the last several years.
Domainers also hate this, as it could dilute the value of their investments.
The PRP’s final report is now open for public comment until April 12.
After receiving these comments, auDA expects its board to provide a response April 15, which itself will be open for public comment until May 10.

22 Comments Tagged: .au, auda, domaining, warehousing

Root servers whacked after crypto change

The DNS root servers came under accidental attack from name servers across the internet following ICANN’s recent changes to their cryptographic master keys, according to Verisign.
The company, which runs the A and J root servers, said it saw requests for DNSSEC data at the root increase from 15 million a day in October to 1.15 billion a day a week ago.
The cause was the October 11 root Key Signing Key rollover, the first change ICANN had made to the “trust anchor” of DNSSEC since it came online at the root in 2010.
The KSK rollover saw ICANN change the cryptographic keys that rest at the very top of the DNSSEC hierarchy.
The move was controversial. ICANN delayed it for a year after learning about possible disruption at internet endpoints. Its Security and Stability Advisory Committee and even its own board were not unanimous that the roll should go ahead.
But the warnings were largely about the impact on internet users, rather than on the root servers themselves, and the impact was minimal.
Verisign is now saying that requests to its roots for DNSSEC key data increased from 15 million per day to 75 million per day, a five-fold increase, almost overnight.
It was not until January, when the old KSK was marked as “revoked”, did the seriously mahooosive traffic growth begin, however. Verisign’s distinguished engineer Duane Wessels wrote:

Everyone involved expected this to be a non-event. However, we instead saw an even bigger increase in DNSKEY queries coming from a population of root server clients. As of March 21, 2019, Verisign’s root name servers receive about 1.15 billion DNSKEY queries per day, which is 75 times higher than pre-rollover levels and nearly 7 percent of our total steady state query traffic.

Worryingly, the traffic only seemed to be increasing, until March 22, when the revoked key was removed from the root entirely.
Wessels wrote that while the root operators are still investigating, “it would seem that the presence of the revoked key in the zone triggered some unexpected behavior in a population of validating resolvers.”
The root operators hope to have answers in the coming weeks, he wrote.
The next KSK rollover is not expected for years, and the root traffic is now returning to normal levels, so there’s no urgency.

Comment Tagged: DNSSEC, ICANN, ksk rollover, root, verisign

XYZ weighs into Epik controversy with .monster fundraising domain

New gTLD registry XYZ.com has set up a domain to help raise money for victims of the terrorist attack in Christchurch, New Zealand last week.
The domain is give.monster. It redirects to a page on Givealittle.co.nz, a Kiwi crowdfunding site, that has so far raised almost NZD 7.8 million ($5.3 million) for the victims of the attack, which killed 50 and injured many more last Friday.
Given the amount of coverage in the New Zealand press, it appears that the fundraising page is legit.
The domain is obviously a reference to Epik.com CEO Rob Monster, who has come in for criticism this week for hosting and sharing the terrorist’s video of the attack, and then suggesting it might be a hoax, as I blogged earlier today.
XYZ is able to create this domain because it is the registry for .monster, a gTLD it acquired last year that is currently slap-bang in the middle of its early access launch period.
Whois records show that the domain was created a little over an hour ago and belongs to XYZ.com LLC.
I learned about it through this comment on DI:

We are sorry to see this in our industry… Please visit http://www.Give.Monster and donate to support victims of the horrific Christchurch shootings. Thank you for your support.

XYZ.com is the registry for .xyz, .college, .rent and other gTLDs. .monster previously belonged to recruitment web site Monster.com.

3 Comments Tagged: .monster, .xyz, christchurch, epik, terrorism, xyz.com