Internet domain registrations cross 350-million mark

Internet domain registry firm VeriSign Inc has said that overall domain name registrations grew to 351.8 million in the first quarter of 2019, a 5.4% increase as compared to the corresponding period of the previous fiscal.

US-based VeriSign, which manages the ".com" and ".net" domains, said there was a 0.9% sequential rise in domain name registrations in the quarter ended March.

The .com and .net top-level domains had a combined total of 154.8 million domain name registrations at the end of the first quarter of 2019, an increase of 1.8 million domain name registrations, or 1.2% growth, compared to the fourth quarter of 2018.

Meanwhile, these top two domains recorded a 4.4% increase or a combined rise of 6.5 million domain name registrations year on year, VeriSign said. Among these two top domains, the .com base stood at 141.0 million domain name registrations, while the .net domain name base was at 13.8 million registrations, it added.

The non-profit organisation Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is responsible for coordinating the maintenance and procedures of several databases related to the namespaces and numerical spaces of the internet. Since starting country-wise domain names like .uk, .ca and .in, the internet has been less reliant on standard domains such as .com and .net.

VeriSign, which earns around $1 billion in annual revenue, also sells security services such as managed domain name systems and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack mitigation.