Internet grows to 271 million domain names in Q4, 2013

BANGALORE, INDIA: VeriSign Inc. today announced five million domain names were added to the Internet in the fourth quarter of 2013, bringing the total number of registered domain names to 271 million worldwide across all top-level domains (TLDs) as of Dec. 31, 2013, according to the latest Domain Name Industry Brief.

Is it likely that we will run out of domain names? No, the number of possible second-level domain names in any TLD is an extremely large number.

The increase of five million domain names globally equates to a growth rate of 1.9 percent over the third quarter of 2013. Worldwide registrations have grown by 18.5 million, or 7.3 percent, year over year.

The .com and .net TLDs experienced aggregate growth in the fourth quarter of 2013, reaching a combined total of approximately 127.2 million domain names in the adjusted zone for .com and .net. This represents a 5 percent increase year over year. As of Dec. 31, 2013, the base of registered names in .com equaled 112 million names, while .net equaled 15.2 million names.

New .com and .net registrations totaled 8.2 million during the fourth quarter of 2013. In the fourth quarter of 2012, new .com and .net registrations totaled 8.0 million.

During the fourth quarter of 2013, Verisign's average daily Domain Name System (DNS) query load was 82 billion across all TLDs operated by Verisign, with a peak of 100 billion. Compared to the previous quarter, the daily average increased 0.9 percent and the peak decreased 5.5 percent. Year over year, the daily average increased 6.4 percent and the peak decreased 19.2 percent.

As the Internet continues to evolve, it is crucial for enterprises to have a powerful and resilient infrastructure that maintains 24/7 availability.