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Spotlight
From .info to .me
An innovator in the global registry services space, Afilias’
latest initiative is the .me domain. By Pratap Vikram Singh
 Providing
global registry services for the past seven years, Afilias came into the spotlight
with the launch of the .info domain, which has currently over five million registrations.
“Afilias was founded by a group of registrars in 2000 seeking to establish
a new registry company to compete in the first allocation of new top level domains
since .com. This has provided Afilias with valuable insight into the industry
and the needs of all areas of the commercial side of the domain name industry,”
said Ram Mohan, Executive Vice President and CTO, Afilias.
The journey
Afilias launched the .info registry in July 2001. This pioneered
the first new gTLD (generic top-level domain) in years and the company says
that it launched the next generation of registry technology at this point.
Afilias completed the successful transition of the .org registry from VeriSign
to its systems, on behalf of the Public Interest Registry. Currently, the company
supports 15 TLDs and over 13 million domain names.
Services
The company focuses on registry services and supports two of the largest domains
namely, .org and .info. “Afilias also supports more diversity in the TLDs
it serves than any other registry. We support gTLDs, sTLD (sponsored TLDs) and
ccTLDs (country code TLDs). Afilias also provides services in the RFID market
with its Afilias Discovery Service, which enables the real-time lookup of event
histories across RFID (Radio frequency identification) networks,” Mohan
added.
Afilias also provides registry services in support to .me (for the country of
Montenegro and available for anyone else in the world to register) and .aero.
The company also works closely with SITA, the registry operator for .aero, on
developing Discovery Services for the aerospace industry and the latter is engaged
in piloting the Afilias Discovery Services product with some airlines for baggage
and part tracking.
| Generic top-level domains |
.info, .org |
| Sponsored top level domains |
.mobi, .aero, .asia |
| Country Code top level domains |
.bz, .gi, .ni, .me, .mn, .sc, .vc |
ccTLD projects
Afilias is a provider of domain name registry services for several countries
around the world, including .ag (Antigua and Barbuda), .bz (Belize), .gi (Gibraltar),
.hn (Honduras), .in (India), .me (Montenegro), .sc (the Seychelles), and .vc
(St. Vincent and the Grenadines). It also provides ancillary support to other
domains, including .sg (Singapore).
| Year |
Milestones |
| 2001 |
Info TLD launched. It is the most successful
domain after .com. By April 2008, organizations around the world had registered
5.2 million domain names with the .info registry. |
| 2002 |
Afilias won the .org domain with PIR |
| 2003 |
The transition of .org began (On January
1, 2003 PIR took over operations of the .org TLD from VeriSign with Afilias
as its partner to tackle the technical operations of .org) |
| 2003-04 |
The company won the contract for the
.in ccTLD. This Internet Country code top-level domain is for India and
as of February 2008, it had 400,000 registrations. |
| 2006 |
It launched the .mobi
TLD. This delivers Internet to mobile devices via the mobile Web and media
coverage about domain names selling for several hundred-thousand dollars
has been frequent. |
| 2007 |
Afilias launched the .asia
TLD. This sponsored top-level domain serve as a regional domain for companies,
organizations and individuals from Asia, Pacific and Australia. |
| 2008 |
It launched .me. This ccTLD belongs to
the country of Montenegro. |
Business process
Afilias does not deal directly with registrants of domain names. The company
sells its domains through a distribution channel of registrars. “Registrars
sell domain names to the general public along with value-added services such
as e-mail, Web site hosting, e-commerce packages, etc.,” Mohan said.
The contracts governing the relationship between Afilias, the registrars and
the registrants vary depending upon the type of TLD in question. For generic
TLDs like .info, .org, .mobi, and .asia, contracts with ICANN (www.icann.org)
govern these domains. “Afilias has a direct contract with ICANN for .info.
As a service provider to the other gTLDs in our portfolio, Afilias has a contract
with the registry operator (e.g. PIR) and abides by the contractual terms of
its agreement with ICANN. In the case of ccTLDs usually our contracts are directly
with the registry authority appointed by the government,” Mohan added.
| .info |
The company It pioneered the deployment
of large scale EPP (Extensible Provisioning Protocol) based domain name
registries while bringing resolution time to less than five minutes. Today
the .INFO domain supports over five million domains and millions of live
sites and it is available in many Internationalize Domain Name (IDN) scripts. |
| .org |
With the successful transition of .org
onto its systems in 2003, Afilias completed the smooth and successfully
migration of over 2.7 million domains. This was the first gTLD registry
migration in history. Afilias upgraded the technology available for .org
including migrating to an EPP registry, the migration available through
many Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) scripts. |
Recruitment and global centers
Afilias recruits people from its centers spread across the
globe and has 120 employees worldwide. With an operational office in New Delhi
that takes care of technology and operations, the company’s centers abroad
includes international headquarters in Dublin, Ireland (Business and Finance);
sales offices in London, England; sales and operational facilities in Toronto
(Technology/Operations); and administrative offices in the US near Philadelphia,
PA (Business & Marketing).
Upcoming initiatives
Elaborating on the company’s plans, Ram Mohan said, “Afilias is focused
on registry services and in growing its portfolio of names under management.
It expects to continue to innovate in this area with related products and services.”
“In recent years, Afilias has also developed and is currently piloting
its Discovery Services product which enables real-time lookup of event histories
across RFID networks (like a UPS tracking system for RFID objects but one that
allows separate proprietary systems to connect and share this information),”
Mohan concluded.
pratap.vikram@expressindia.com
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