Russia Plans For Being Disconnected From Internet, Bring .RU Under Government Control
The Russian government is preparing an action plan should they be disconnected by the west according to news reports following the deteriorating relations the country is facing with the west. A report in The Guardian suggests the plans could be ready early next year, with the plans brought forward with the aim of reducing Russia’s dependency on American technology and digital infrastructure, amid fears that its communications are vulnerable to US spying.
“We are preparing an action plan. We are looking at various options how to ensure that internet access was not cut off whatever our partners might do,” Communications Minister Nikolai Nikiforov said according to ITAR TASS.
According to the ITAR TASS report, Nikiforov said his ministry’s joint exercises with the Russian defence ministry and the Federal Security Service had been necessitated by attempts to switch Russia off various networks, including those serving bank cards. He also cited as a reason the European Parliament’s plans to switch Russia off the SWIFT system.
“In these conditions, we looked at scenarios when our esteemed partners suddenly decide to block internet access for Russia. Russia is a great country and cannot afford that,” Nikiforov said, adding that it was planned to work on a number of technical aspects to prevent switching the Russian segment off the worldwide web. These measures, in his words, would require no considerable funds.
“Regrettable, some components of the infrastructure are not located in Russia and are administered from outside,” he said.
But it could be just talk following the deteriorating relations Russia is facing with the west. Experts told ITAR TASS the full separation of Russian segment of Internet, known as Runet, from the global network is impossible both due to technical and political reasons.
Andrei Soldatov, an expert on Russia’s spy agencies, described the plans as big news. In an email from Moscow to The Guardian he said he “didn’t actually believe” Russian officials would disconnect the internet. But he said the moves were a “real step forward in the development of a besieged fortress mentality”
He wrote: “Before, such ideas were mostly to do with so-called government communications (how to make them independent from western technologies). Now they want to expand this crazy idea to the entire internet of the country.”
Soldatov said it would be technically possible for Moscow to shut off the internet because Russia has “surprisingly few” international exchange points. All of them are under the control of national long-distance operations, like Rostelecom, which are close to the authorities, he said.
The most ominous element, he added, was the security council’s apparent proposal to take control over .ru, as well as the domains .su (for Soviet Union) and .рф (Russian Federation in Cyrillic). These domains currently belong to a non-government organisation, the coordination centre of the national domain, rather than to government. Many are currently hosted abroad.
“The thing might be approved very quickly, and this means it shows a way to the next step – to force all domains in the .ru zone to be hosted in Russia,” Soldatov said. Kazakhstan, an authoritarian state intolerant of online criticism, did something similar two years ago, he said, adding that such a move would affect his own website Agentura.ru, which is hosted in Germany.
Alexey Salnikov, the deputy director of the Information Security Institute at the Moscow State University, has rejected this possibility. “ICANN is unlikely to have technical possibilities to fully cut off one or several segments from the global Internet network,” he told ITAR TASS Friday. “The structure of the Internet envisages that if any provider shuts off its networking equipment, the traffic will go through another provider,” Salnikov explained.
The coordinator at Safer Internet Center in Russia, Urvan Parfentyev, also speaking to ITAR TASS there have been no such precedents when countries were cut off the Internet and this could result in further political risks for the United States. “A huge amount of program and technical infrastructure of the Internet is within the US jurisdiction and may be used in the US interests. If any national domain is cut off, this will prove that supporters of the idea that the Internet issues should be managed by the United Nations are right,” he said.
The Vedomosti newspaper reported that Russia’s Security Council, chaired by President Vladimir Putin, is due to discuss on Monday ways in which Russia could separate itself from the Internet in case of an emergency.
SIDN Approaching 6 Million Domain Name Registrations Under .NL
Sidn, the company behind .NL domain extension, is approaching 6 million domain name registrations under .NL. The company achieved the 5.5 million milestone in this year.
.NL is one of the most popular extensions in the world.Individuals are allowed to register .NL domain names for 11 years ,since 2003.
The .NL ccTLD of the Netherlands is the third largest ccTLD in the world after .DE with 15 million registrations and .CO.UK with 10 million registrations.
21% of households in the Netherlands own at least one .NL domain name and 83% of firms in the contry own a website.
At the time of writing this article there are 5,504,877 registered .NL domain names.
Check out EuroDNS here to register your .NL domain name.
.Press – 800 Registrations in the first hour of General Availability, .Host – 780
.Press and .Host entered General Availability a few days ago. 800 .Press domain names have been registered during the irst 24 hours of its General Availability.
Neither .Press, nor .Host didn’t do well. The first one got 800 registrations, while the second one got only 780.
The numbers also include registrations from Sunrise and Landrush period.
Radix also launched that day .Website, which got the most registrations – 6,342.
NameJet Reports $744,000 in Domain Name Sales in August 2014
NameJet has just sent out its monthly sales report. Sales add up to a total of $743,969 .Only domain name sales over $2,000 were reported.
Here are the sales :
bigdeals.com $36.100,00
gains.com $25.500,00
pnn.com $23.200,00
umd.com $20.199,00
partyideas.com $20.101,00
sdh.com $18.600,00
countrystore.com $16.399,00
uoi.com $15.288,00
fl.org $14.667,00
chimneysweep.com $14.544,00
fhf.com $13.800,00
mrq.com $12.100,00
unchs.org $11.600,00
musicstudio.com $11.100,00
joanns.com $11.055,00
ifk.com $10.600,00
custompens.com $10.109,00
wiy.com $9.600,00
loans.info $7.555,00
elheraldo.com $7.553,00
vqs.com $7.500,00
studyweb.com $7.012,00
911.cc $6.900,00
00006.com $6.010,00
twobulls.com $5.724,00
valores.com $5.202,00
usaid.com $5.200,00
shuicai.com $5.100,00
compliance.net $5.099,00
evid.com $4.922,00
onlinecarloans.com $4.800,00
quickcashadvance.com $4.600,00
kofi.com $4.400,00
ieducation.com $4.300,00
tiaoqing.com $4.188,00
halsa.com $3.689,00
corebanking.net $3.675,00
recharger.com $3.600,00
hg5533.com $3.501,00
bmap.com $3.311,00
emeetings.com $3.009,00
k56.com $3.000,00
vip7.com $3.000,00
webbe.com $2.988,00
agbc.com $2.980,00
medicalsystems.com $2.955,00
virtualidentity.com $2.922,00
hg8555.com $2.900,00
baker.net $2.777,00
ammo.org $2.600,00
hg5522.com $2.600,00
policeuniforms.com $2.599,00
msnb.com $2.569,00
dronie.com $2.551,00
computerschool.com $2.544,00
turbotech.com $2.524,00
monkeypic.com $2.505,00
marijuanaking.com $2.500,00
saag.com $2.500,00
halaltravel.com $2.402,00
childwatch.com $2.369,00
atlantaworkforce.org $2.357,00
yelllowpages.com $2.322,00
itsecurityconsulting.com $2.322,00
diamondresort.com $2.311,00
morel.com $2.302,00
cheapcarloan.com $2.300,00
adaproject.org $2.201,00
autoinsuranceagent.com $2.156,00
oure.com $2.102,00
clearwaterhotels.com $2.100,00
7x7x.com $2.100,00
uswaternews.com $2.100,00
dush.com $2.034,00
entrench.com $2.011,00
mastersdegreeonline.com $2.005,00
supermarket.org $2.005,00
sarasotahotels.com $2.001,00
goodcarinsurance.com $2.000,00
paydaymoney.com $2.000,00
833333.com $2.000,00
matjar.com $2.000,00
Sedo Releases Report From the Dmexco Conference
Sedo has recently released the report on the DMexco 2014 Digital Marketing Exposition & Conference . The conference was held in Cologne, Germany.
You can read the press release after the jump :
“Exciting – surprising – active – perceptive – instructive – yummy: all these terms describe our dmexco experience together with our registry partners! As two very successful fair days came to an end, we would like to share with you – those of you who could not be there – how the online marketing industry responded to the subject of domains and what challenges need to be addressed in the domain industry.
The goal:
Create awareness among 32,000 international visitors from the digital industry about the importance of having a good domain name along with a distinct domain name strategy, inform them about the new gTLDs in the market, and advise and provide guidelines on how to identify high quality domain names that will synch beautifully with their portfolio and business models.
How:
In collaboration with our partners, those with representatives at the Sedo booth such as Famous Four Media (.webcam, .trade, .bid), Donuts (.reisen, .email, .media, .events), DotClub (.club), NicAT (.at), and Denic (.de), we were able to expose the dmexco audience to how large the domain industry presence is in the online marketing world and provide useful information from all of our sponsors including PIR (.org), Uniregistry (.sexy, .link, .photo, .pics), Nominet (.uk), domain.me and Regiodot (.ruhr). We also demonstrated that our industry is bolstered by a huge network consisting of Sedo, Registries and Registrars. We want to extend a big thank you to all our partners who supported this idea, attended the show, provided marketing materials to share with visitors and for being great sponsors that understood the importance of communicating the main goal of the industry: your domain is your home!
Reactions:
The idea of giving away free Frozen Yogurts with toppings named for TLDs such as .sexy, .uk, .club and more was simple, and SO effective. More than 2,000 frozen yogurt cups were served up to visitors to our booth. While choosing their topping combinations of TLDs, it was the first time many were hearing that these aren’t just fun names; they are real TLDs new to the market and are available for them to snatch up for their businesses.
Jodie Chamberlain, a domain industry event expert with vast experience in large-scale event planning was a fantastic supporter of this effort, never shying away from talking all about domains to our many visitors. She had this to say about her interactions at dmexco: “While dmexco participants were knowledgeable about traditional domain endings, I’d say that 90% of them never heard of the new gTLDs. But they were online marketers, so it just took seconds for them to understand what opportunities new gTLDs can bring them.”
These discussions were turned into sales leads as 20 Sedo sales representatives were busy taking over the conversations to go into greater detail about domains. “The high level of knowledge the Sedo representatives had at the booth about the domain industry and new gTLDs exceeded my expectations. They know exactly what the end user’s needs are and how they can impart this knowledge and turn it into sales leads,” said Colin Campbell from Dotclub.
Our partners, having been to numerous conferences already, were clearly surprised by the large scale of dmexco with its immense and diverse target groups and stakeholders, all within reach at one place. “It was wonderful to see so many different companies from within the domain industry working together to promote the importance of domain names. Dmexco proved a great opportunity to educate marketers and consumers about new TLDs and moreover the fantastic branding opportunities a relevant, specific, and memorable domain name can provide to businesses of all sizes and varieties. We’re really grateful to Sedo for making that happen and were very impressed with how everything turned out — from the conference to the booth, all of it was first-rate,” said Amy Repp and Jenny White from Donuts Inc.
Challenges and main talking points with the press and visitors:
It was important for us to not only create awareness for the new gTLDs, but also for domains in general. While some may think the biggest challenge is new gTLD awareness, we know from our involvement with end users that in many cases we need to go back and start from square one. For example, in Germany every sixth business still has no company website. Even some of those with a website for their business use a general Yahoo, Gmail or GMX email address instead of using their own domain names and branding in their general communications. Try to estimate how many businesses that have a website, but not a “good” name? The number is very likely a higher one. It’s not that these decision makers are ignorant or not willing to spend money on a better domain – a lot of them just aren’t aware of the benefits a quality name can afford them. All of this is not new information for domain sellers, but we are truly grateful to have had the opportunity to talk to people directly at dmexco and show them all the possibilities for success with the right domains.
With almost 1,000 new gTLDs coming, companies need to make sure they understand the world of domains and how they can get the best results. Tech, PR, marketing and advertising agencies are often the first point of contact for companies when it comes to a new product launch and/or campaign or business ideas. These agencies are stakeholders and need to be knowledgeable about domains, the options available, and what goes into a domain name so that they can consult with and support their corporate clients in a sufficient and innovative way. Dmexco was the perfect place to meet these stakeholders, share ideas all while in a fun environment giving them the chance to play around with keywords, TLDs and much more. Now these 2,000+ booth visitors know exactly where to start when they are creating their domain strategy to stay competitive in the digital future! “
