Executive Blog

Slowly cracking the DNSSEC code at ICANN 43
Ram Mohan's Blog
Apr 5, 2012

As regular readers know, ICANN holds lengthy, in-depth discussions devoted to DNSSEC at each of its three annual meetings. The half-day session held at ICANN 43 in Costa Rica last month was particularly interesting. What became clear is that the industry is quickly moving into the end-user adoption phase of global DNSSEC deployment.

NASA teething troubles teach a DNSSEC lesson
Ram Mohan's Blog
Mar 22, 2012

On January 18, 2012, Comcast customers found they could not access the NASA.gov website. Some users assumed that Comcast was deliberately blocking the website or that NASA, like Wikipedia and Reddit, was participating in the "blackout" protests against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) going on that day. As it turned out, the truth was much less exciting, but it offers important...

Being a .PRO when choosing a registry services partner
Roland LaPlante's Blog
Jan 17, 2012

Have you seen the press release announcing that Afilias has acquired the .PRO registry from Hostway Corporation? We’re excited to bring a new top-level domain into the Afilias family and help grow the use of it. I also think it shows that the top-level domain business is a unique one – and it’s not one to be entered into lightly.

Afilias says “no” to SOPA
Ram Mohan's Blog
Jan 6, 2012

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is the subject of substantial controversy in the United States, and the domain name industry is squarely in the middle of the debate. Many DNS service providers and technology developers in the industry oppose SOPA, Afilias among them. Here's why.

And the winners of the 2011 .INFO Awards are ...
vhedderel's Blog
Dec 16, 2011

Afilias is excited to announce the winners of the 2011 .INFO Awards, highlighting some of the best .INFO sites of the past year. The final scores were calculated from both a public vote and judges' scores to arrive at the three winners.

DNSSEC Update from ICANN 42 in Dakar
Ram Mohan's Blog
Nov 30, 2011

While the global rollout of Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) continues at the domain name registry level -- with more than 25% of top-level domains now signed -- the industry continues to focus on the problem of registrar, ISP and ultimately end-user adoption. At the ICANN meeting in Dakar in late October, engineers from some of the early-adopting registries gathered for their regular face-to-face discussion about how to break the “chicken or egg” problems of secure domain...

Meet the Judges for 2011 .INFO Awards
Nov 23, 2011

The fifth annual .INFO Awards are now in full swing. As a celebration during the tenth anniversary of the .INFO domain, Afilias is offering larger-than-ever cash prizes -- including a $10,000 first prize -- for the best .INFO sites of 2011.

Helping choose the top-ten best .INFO sites, which will then be voted on by the general public between December 5-13, 2011, are a distinguished panel of judges from the online, media and technology industries. They...

Here are the winners of the Afilias Global Innovation Contest for New TLD Ideas
Roland LaPlante's Blog
Oct 25, 2011

The winners of the Afilias Global Innovation Contest for New TLD Ideas are in.

dot Brands Need to Look under the Hood before Partnering
Roland LaPlante's Blog
Oct 21, 2011

As the countdown for the ICANN gTLD program ticks away its final 100 days, potential dot Brand applicants have to make important decisions in a short space of time: whether to apply for a new TLD, how to best leverage a new top-level domain, and which gTLD partner to choose.

Take control of your brand with a new gTLD
Roland LaPlante's Blog
Oct 4, 2011

Successful companies already understand the importance and impact of brand control in domain names. No company would ever consider using hotmail.com or gmail.com email addresses for official business. A decade ago, did companies invest in Geocities or Tripod URLs, or did they promote their own domain names? Today, if a company hosts its blog with WordPress.com, do they take the default brand.wordpress.com Web address, or do they upgrade to their own branded second-level domain name? If they...