Domains & DNS: June 2006 Archives

I register a lot of domains for different purposes. Sometimes it's simply a case of checking if something works or not.. In the process I've ended up with some really odd domains.. so I was wondering, What's the weirdest or strangest domain you own?

The last week has seen some interesting news in the world of regional domains. Eurid's latest statistics show that they will hit the 2 million domain mark very soon. Of course there's no easy way to see how many of them are actually valid and what's more worrying is the registry's attitude towards this. AFNIC, the French registry, published an initial report of their "liberalisation":

The launch process, distributed from June 20th to June 23th, did not encounter any technical problems. This success is the result of several months of preparation led by the AFNIC teams and to which the .fr registrars have participated.

Unlike some ccTLDs, AFNIC regularly update registrars about the exact status of their technical services and infrastructure.... Over 37 thousand new .fr domains were registered in the first week. Denic, the German registry, have passed the 10 million domain mark And the ICANN meeting in Morocco is running until Friday

Want to give RoR a go? We're currently beta testing it and I thought some people would like to get something for free on a Friday, so I'm giving away a few hosting accounts and domains (not .ie!) to readers of this blog. Simply email me with the subject line "RoR" and I'll get you hooked up More details on the BK Blog EDIT: We've had an excellent response to this offer and more than enough people have signed up. Watch this space for more news.

Afternic just sent me a link to their new look and feel site. It looks really good: New Site It seems like everyone is updating their websites this year!

We're currently offering .eu domains for a mere 15 euro

The IEDR has vanished (again!) including whois, website and backend

The IEDR have finally got around to publishing a newsletter for their resellers / registrars

Has the IE zone become a squatter's paradise? Over the last few months the number of dodgy registrations has grown incrementally. For example, this afternoon I typed in Google.ie into my brower - or at least I thought I did! I ended up on yet another typo squat belonging to Gabor Varga & Jozsef Petho, who also own such classics as ipod.ie. Which domains do they have? Well if you try a few possible typos of the domain google.ie you might guess them: gogle.ie googel.ie googl.ie googol.ie (you can generate your own ones here) Of course the only way that their little scheme would be viable is if they are running ads on the sites that the domains are pointed to. If the ads they are running are either amazon or google ads then they are in breach of the terms of service, as both programs preclude the use of domain names that infringe their intellectuall property rights (try alexa.ie!) For a managed registry IEDR obviously don't seem to be paying that much attention to the obvious abusers.... They will, of course, claim that the registrants were able to justify the registration through the provision of RBNs, but anyone with half a clue can see that these domains are being registered with only one thought in mind - to grab typo / type in traffic So who is worse? IEDR or Eurid?

The Spanish NIC is still using a dodgy SSL, yet they have a banner on their main page advertising a special offer on SSL certs!

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