ICANN 5 Celebrates a Succeful Year of New gTLDs by Shane Ryan

One year ago this month, the first new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) went live.

As the ICANN 51 meeting approaches, ICANN has officially executed 515 new gTLD Registry Agreements since mid-September. (You can view the full list here.) Many companies are registering new domain names to gain heightened visibility for their companies, including better SEO and the ability to register short or distinctive names that are no longer available within the traditional domains, such as .com or .net. Some of the most recently delegated domain names include .IBM, .FORSALE, .WORK, .CHROME and .PHARMACY.

Of all the new gTLDs delegated, Iron Mountain has signed Registry Data Escrow Agreements with over 70% of them.

Through ICANN's contracts with registries (such as dot-com or dot-info) and registrars (companies that sell domain names to individuals and organizations), the organization helps define how the domain name system functions and expands. In order to keep the Internet and the businesses that depend on it running smoothly, ICANN requires gTLDs to protect their domain name registration data via a Registry Data Escrow Agreement. In the event that a registry fails or falls short of meeting its requirements, ICANN can reassign its customer data to another registry to ensure that the domain-holding businesses do not suffer.

Over the past year, the new registries have registered 2 million domain names in the new gTLD space.

According to CENTR's Domain report, as of August 2014 the total number of domains across all Top Level Domains (TLDs) stood at 282.5 million (including new gTLDs). The chart below shows the total number of registrations for each type of domain, as well as growth over the three month period. Country code top-level domains, or ccTLDs, currently account for 45.8% of all TLD registrations and have had a growth rate of 1.7% over the past three months. This compares to nearly 149 million legacy gTLDs, which are only growing at 0.3%. And, although new gTLDs can only claim about 2 million domain dames to date, the growth rate is 139.8%.

Source: DomainWire Stat report and ZooNIC

With reaching the mark of 2 million registered new gTLD domain names, the European Domain Centre blog compiled an excellent expert roundup on What's the future for the new gTLDs? It provides some interesting perspectives, and I encourage you to take a look.

Iron Mountain has a long history with ICANN, protecting registry data, registrar data, and new gTLD and ccTLD client data. Since 2001, Iron Mountain has handled over 500,000 data escrow deposits and is the most experienced escrow agent, protecting over 140 million domain names.

We'll be at the ICANN 51 meeting, and would be happy to talk to you about data escrow for new gTLDs or ccTLDs. This year, Iron Mountain will be partnering with ICANNWiki in sponsorship of the ICANNWiki card decks that are handed out at all of the shows. Cards feature caricatures of attendees from various ICANN related organizations. John Boruvka, Frank Bruno, and I (The Aces in your deck) encourage conference attendees to connect with us at the meeting.

We look forward to seeing you in L.A.!

Shane Ryan

LINK:	http://blogs.ironmountain.com/2014/service-lines/technology-escrow/ica...
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