New domains: growth point or reason for disappointment?

New gTLDs became the main subject of the first working day in TLDCON 2015. There are almost 7 million registered names in all new gTLDs today. In total, there are slightly less than 700 delegated domains, and registration is open in more than a half of them. 100,000 registration mark was overcome by 10 domains.

Whether the expectations of new registries, registrars and ICANN were met? At the end of June, ICANN reported that registration mark in new gTLDs is significantly lower than it was planned: at the beginning of 2014, the corporation predicted 33 million registrations, the result of mid-2015 was nearly 5 times less. It is remarkable that there is no a term of "expected registration number" in ICANN ‘s adopted next fiscal year budget.

But not all registries and registrars share ICANN’s pessimism. For example, representatives of two Russian registrars, RU-CENTER and 101 Domain which actively joined the New gTLD program, estimate the first results as very positively. So, Sergei Gorbunov from RU-CENTER pointed out that new gTLDs met expectations for Russian registars, "We prolong 60% of new domains, and it is comparable to .РФ in the first working year." According to the speaker, despite a small number of registrations in each separate new domain, in general they give high figures for the registrar which can offer a wide range of domains to client. Denis Rotanov (101 Domain) pointed out that the domains which registries differ in well-planned organization of domain zone advertizing and in competent creation of marketing company are the most successful.

Michaela Kruden from Afilias holds the same opinion, but, unlike the Russian colleagues, European registry is dissatisfied with results of the program: "Expectations weren't absolutely met, we assumed that the registration level in new domains will be higher". Not always well thought-out marketing and advertizing program of separate registries, as well as incomplete readiness of registrars became one of the reasons. It was confirmed by the domain consultant Daniel Eyzenhat: "Large registries like Afilias or Donuts used all possible resources to promote their new domains, and it gives results. The majority of other new domains appeared in worst situation, and it is natural".

Denis Zhilin told about the Russian children's domain .ДЕТИ. "Children's Runet is nearly 2% of "adult’s one". That’s why we had to create special space for children and teenagers", Denis Zhilin told (.ДЕТИ). .ДЕТИ drew attention of children and pedagogical community thanks to the fact it allows precisely positioning the content in information field.

Participants of the second section devoted to new domains – "New gTLD vs the secondary market. What will users choose" – noted that the increase in number of gTLDs didn't practically affect a total registration number: there was a redistribution of registrations and their some quantity "migrated" in new domains. Not all companies working at the domain market are satisfied with a situation with new domains. So, Andrey Savelyev representing Домены.рф relates to new domains very radically: "I don't know any large deals in the secondary market with new domains so far, there is no large project in new zones". Maxim Alzoba who told about development of city domains .MOSCOW and .МОСКВА disagreed with him. Many companies and organizations working in Moscow showed their interest to registration of names in these domains, and the domains are steadily growing. Robert Gledenov (SaleNames) emphasized that today there is a growth of the secondary domain market, "white market" of domain names in Russia is $5,000,000 a year, and "gray market", by his estimates, twice more.

Domain space growth imposes new requirements to the companies which provide stability and reliability of Internet work, are engaged in construction and exploitation of network infrastructure, provide services to registries and registrars. Participants of the section "New Businesses of Backend-providers" discussed how the largest infrastructure companies work in new conditions and to what calls they should react quickly. For example, the "Internet of things" for which millions of IP addresses will be required in the nearest future became a serious call for RIPE NCC. This problem is easily solved by transition to IPv6, but it appeared that end users aren't ready to use it.

Pavel Hramtsov told about the new MSK-IX services. He pointed out that one of the largest European points of MSK-IX traffic exchange very quickly reacts to constantly changing market requirements, developing the most modern services, for example, DNS hosting and opened DNS resolver. The company offers the whole set of additional services to its clients.

Domain space security became another subject of section. Technical Center of Internet, having been cooperated with a number of the largest Russian companies in this direction for a long time, does a lot in this area.

TLDCON 2015 will continue working tomorrow.