More Brands Are Turning to .com for International Appeal

• By • Domain Names

One of the greatest strengths of the internet is seen when a customer in one country engages with a brand in another. The internet has enabled companies to grow in influence and reach customers far beyond national boundaries in ways that could not have been foreseen even a decade ago.

One of the few places where national boundaries are still apparent online though is in a brand’s domain name. By using a domain name tied to a country, such as one ending in  .uk, .ru,  or another country code top-level domain (ccTLD), a brand can signal to the world its country of origin.

This is great for a company that only wants to engage with customers in their home country. However, for a person attempting to access content from abroad, a domain name ending in a ccTLD may be difficult to remember due to its unfamiliar syntax. Companies seeking to connect with a global audience can’t afford to have the address for their digital storefronts be limiting in any way. For this reason, it is usually best to select a domain name extension that people are globally familiar with, like .com and .net.

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Rewarding Research: A Better Connected World, Name Collisions and Beyond

• By • Domain Names

It’s a privilege for Verisign to welcome this week the recipients of our 2012 Internet Infrastructure Grant program, who will be presenting the results of research their teams have conducted over the past year and a half.  The results will be the focus of our fourth and final Verisign Labs Distinguished Speaker Series event for the year.

The event will open with a keynote talk by Prof. Ellen Zegura of Georgia Tech (United States), who will give an overview of the field these two projects explore, “Intermittent and Low-Resource Networks: Theory and Practice.” It’s an honor to have Prof. Zegura with us to describe both the academic and hands-on work she’s conducted in this important area.

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vBSDcon: Builders and Archaeologists

• By • Domain Names

Fascinating tour of C compiler evolution by David Chisnall http://vrsn.cc/1dUb5rY @Verisign‘s #vBSDcon. Compatible with DOS or VAX?

I began my journey into computer science as a high school freshman coding on a TI-59 calculator. Later in my high school years, I wrote computer chess games on a PDP-11/34 minicomputer in BASIC and, for speed, in assembly language. I might have contributed inadvertently to the Y2K problem with some FORTRAN and COBOL programs I wrote in the early 1980s. In college, I learned LISP and CLU on a MULTICS operating system, and had a part-time job where I programmed on a VAX-11/750. But eventually I did get around to coding in C on a Unix box.

So this is a little more information than 140 characters would allow, which may explain why I found David Chisnall’s opening talk at the recent vBSDcon so fascinating. DOS and VAX are to computer professionals what the classics are to the liberal arts: our Iliad and Odyssey. And C and Unix, in their various forms, are the living languages that preserve the connection to the early days – the contemporary variants of Koine Greek. The art of building C compilers as well as operating systems continues to advance skillfully.

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Verisign to Issue New Domain Name Industry Brief Beginning in 2014

• By • Domain Names

Today, Verisign announced that we are updating the Domain Name Industry Brief (DNIB) and a new version of the DNIB is expected to be released in the first quarter of 2014.

With the internet continuing to evolve in new ways, we have been evaluating how best to align the DNIB with that evolution so it better addresses the interests of our readers and expands the scope of the trends we’re tracking. We remain committed to continuing to provide informative content on the latest industry trends that are most relevant to our readers.

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Verisign Delegates Four New gTLDs to the Root Zone

• By • Domain Names

Guest post from Pat Kane, Senior Vice President, Naming and Directory Services

On Oct. 23, 2013, at approximately 11:00 a.m. EDT, Verisign received authorization instructions from the U.S. Department of Commerce National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to delegate four new gTLDs into the root zone, which we are responsible for maintaining per the Cooperative Agreement between Verisign and NTIA. Verisign acted in accordance with our contractual obligation and delegated these TLDs into the root zone at 2:33 p.m. EDT the same day.

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Verisign Launches Verisign DomainScope: Take the Guesswork Out of Finding the Right Domain Name

• By • Domain Names

Today Verisign announced the launch of Verisign DomainScope, a new domain name discovery tool designed to enhance the search for unique, relevant domain name choices in the .com, .net, .tv and .cc top-level domains. Incorporating the same functionality found in our DomainFinder, DomainScore and DomainCountdown tools, DomainScope replaces these tools and allows users to focus their domain search and uncover new domain name registration opportunities in one place.*

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Why Small Businesses Say Having a Website is Important

• By • • Domain Names

Today, people often turn to the internet first for information about businesses and products – whether they are shopping online, or simply looking for a business’ address or phone number – making an online presence one of the most important assets for any business; not just to share information, but to build credibility.

Consumers are looking to connect with companies more than ever, and establishing an online presence through a website, blog or social channels provides a great way to fulfill this desire. But there are still many small businesses lacking an online presence, effectively hanging a closed sign up for their potential customers.

To understand the benefits, barriers and preferences for creating an online presence, Verisign recently worked with Merrill Research to conduct a global survey of 1,050 small businesses with an online presence about their experiences and gained some interesting insights.

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Diversity, Openness and vBSDcon 2013

• By • Domain Names

“There never were in the world two opinions alike, no more than two hairs or two grains; the most universal quality is diversity”

–Michel Eyquem, seigneur de Montaigne (1533–1592)

Diversity is a central design principle of the Domain Name System. With respect to the DNS root, it’s the reason that there are 13 separately managed root servers with 12 independent operators. It’s the reason Verisign operates the two root servers we’re responsible for – the A and J roots – as well as other name servers – at multiple locations around the world. It’s also the reason that within these locations operated by Verisign, multiple physical servers handle the incoming traffic. And it’s the reason that among these multiple servers, we use multiple hardware and software platforms, as well as multiple network providers.

In other words, diversity is one reason the DNS industry in general, and Verisign in particular, doesn’t do everything the same way and in the same place.

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15 Facts About .net to Celebrate 15 Million Registrations

• By • Domain Names

Recently, .net hit a major milestone when its zone surpassed 15 million .net domains registered globally, making it one of the most popular domain extensions on the Internet today.  Supported by the same infrastructure and expertise that has powered .com for more than 15 years, .net is recognized around the world as an established and credible place to interact online. To mark this momentous occasion, we pulled together 15 facts about .net. How many .net facts do you already know?

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