Now, Internet has nearly 202 mn domain names

BANGALORE, INDIA: The global base of Internet domain names grew by nearly 3.8 million in the third quarter of 2010, according to the latest Domain Name Industry Brief, published by VeriSign, Inc.

The third quarter of 2010 closed with a base of almost 202 million domain name registrations across all Top Level Domains (TLDs), or a 2 per cent increase over the second quarter, said VeriSign, a leading provider of Internet infrastructure services. Registrations have grown by 13.3 million, or 7 per cent year-over-year.

Web addresses become multilingual

The combined base of .com and .net domain names surpassed 103 million. New .com and .net registrations totaled 7.5 million during the third quarter, an increase of 7 per cent from a year ago. The .com/.net renewal rate for the third quarter was 72.8 per cent, down from 73.2 per cent for the second quarter. The base of Country Code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs) was 79.2 million domain names, a 2.4 per cent increase from a year ago.

VeriSign's average daily Domain Name System (DNS) query load during third quarter 2010 was 66 billion per day, with a peak of 78 billion. Compared to the same timeframe in 2009, the daily query average increased 23 per cent and the peak grew by 27 per cent, said the study.

The Decade of the International Internet

The latest Domain Name Industry Brief also spotlights the importance of International Domain Names (IDNs), as the growth of the Internet spreads around the globe.

Over the past decade, the Internet has internationalized its audience, and today the English-speaking world makes up less than 40 per cent of Internet users, said VeriSign.

Africa had less than 5 million Internet users a decade ago; now, it has more than 100 million. And while in 2000, Asia was essentially even with Europe and North America for users, today it has more than those two continents combined.

In the coming decade, the Internet will continue to become a ubiquitous, multi-cultural tool, fueled in part by the adoption of IDNs, it added. By enabling online content and businesses to be represented in local scripts and languages, IDNs help the Internet to expand the power of technology to regions and cultures, and connect the world in new ways.