Verisign has recently published the latest Domain Name Industry Brief for the quarter ending March 31,2012 .The report reveals that more than seven million domain names were added to the Internet in the first quarter of 2012.

You can read the press release after the jump :

“More than seven million domain names were added to the Internet in the first quarter of 2012, bringing the total number of registered domain names to more than 233 million worldwide across all domains, according to the latest Domain Name Industry Brief, published by VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ: VRSN), the trusted provider of Internet infrastructure services for the networked world.
The increase of 7.5 million domain names equates to a growth rate of 3.3 percent over the fourth quarter of 2011, and marks the fifth straight quarter with greater than two percent growth. Registrations have grown by more than 23 million, or 11 percent, since the first quarter of 2011.

In the first quarter of 2012, Verisign began tracking the ccTLDs launched by ICANN through the IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process, which enabled countries and territories that use languages based on scripts other than Latin to offer users domain names in non-Latin characters. This additional tracking resulted in an additional 808,967 ccTLD names being reported in the first quarter that were not previously reported in prior periods. For further information on the Domain Name Industry Brief methodology, please refer to page six of the report.

The .com and .net Top-Level Domains (TLDs) experienced aggregate growth in the first quarter, reaching a combined total of approximately 116.7 million active domain names in the adjusted zone for .com and .net. This represents a 2.5 percent increase in the base over the fourth quarter of 2011 and an 8.1 percent increase over the first quarter of 2011. Additionally, the .com registry grew to more than 100 million domain names during the quarter.

New .com and .net registrations totaled 8.9 million during the quarter. This is a 7.7 percent increase year-over-year in new registrations. The .com/.net renewal rate for the first quarter of 2012 was 73.9 percent, up from 73.5 percent for the fourth quarter of 2011.

Verisign’s average daily Domain Name System (DNS) query load during the first quarter of 2012 was 66 billion, with a peak of 74 billion. Compared to the previous quarter, the daily average increased 4 percent and the peak decreased 37 percent.

IPV6 AND SECURITY
The latest issue of the Domain Name Industry Brief highlights key security issues that Internet stakeholders should consider in order to support a smooth transition to IPv6, and identifies steps that organizations should take to protect their systems.

The benefits of IPv6 have been well documented. As almost all available IPv4 addresses within the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) block have been depleted, and Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) will begin to exhaust their IPv4 address pools at varying rates in the near future, this should provide the impetus for widespread adoption of IPv6. Coupled with the continued deployment of DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC), IPv6 should ultimately provide the stable and secure base for the next generation of Internet evolution.

Responsibility for making that happen lies among all Internet stakeholders. To support a smooth IPv6 transition, everyone from infrastructure operators and service providers to application developers and users will have to work together to support and develop IPv6 capabilities by debugging issues with new software and applications that are IPv6 only, and refining interworking and transitional co-existence with IPv4. But most importantly, Internet stakeholders should focus on security.

IPv6 presents an interesting security paradox. The capabilities IPv6 provides will enhance online security, but they may also present risks if not properly managed.

To ensure a smooth IPv6 transition and eliminate security pitfalls, there are several steps that organizations can take to protect their systems, including:

Begin monitoring networks for IPv6 traffic, especially if there are IPv6-enabled devices, operating systems and transitional configurations on the network.
Turn off “IPv6 everywhere” to ensure that there are not any unknown paths through the network.
Conduct an IPv6 pilot on a small portion of the network, potentially using a transitional technology.
Develop a plan to transition an entire network to IPv6 incrementally.
Verisign publishes the Domain Name Industry Brief to provide Internet users throughout the world with significant statistical and analytical research and data on the domain name industry and the Internet as a whole. Copies of the 2012 first quarter Domain Name Industry Brief, as well as previous reports, can be obtained at: www.verisigninc.com/DNIB.

One of the challenging aspects of child safety online is the multitude of tools available and getting people to use them. There are many worthwhile projects that have come and gone, or just never really made it.

One that comes to mind was RSAC (Recreational Software Advisory Council) that morphed into ICRA (Internet Content Rating Association) which itself morphed into FOSI (Family Online Safety Institute). The latter continues but not as the original projects had intended. At some stage ICRA’s goal of having much content online labelled for nudity, sex, violence and language died a slow death with a notice on their website now saying “the ICRA labeling engine has been discontinued.”

The latest to die a slow death is kids.us. A recent notice on the kids.us website says “the kids.us domain name registry was created in 2003 as a result of the Dot Kids Implementation and Efficiency Act of 2002.” Much like kids.us!

The notice on the kids.us website says “today there are hundreds, if not thousands, of sites containing high quality content aimed at children under the age of 13. Additionally, parents have a multitude of tools at their disposal including, software applications, web browsers, and parental control features from their Internet Service Providers, hosting providers and third party applications, to help keep their children safe on-line.”

True enough. But in reality it seems big business has won in the battle for kids and parents minds. The BBC, Disney and other large corporations battle for kid’s eyeballs and interactivity and aim to give their parents the comfort that their kids are safe when using their websites. Plus the use of other parental tools hasn’t helped either.

There are estimates that the number of registrations are in the “low three figures” or even below 100.

So “as a result of the changed landscape of the Internet and the many other tools that parents now have available to them to protect their children’s online experience, effective July 27, 2012, the Department of Commerce suspended the kids.us If you are a registrant or holder of a kids.us name, please contact your registrar for further information about the suspension of this domain.”

Strict registration rules, high domain name registration fees and poor marketing did not help either.

It seems for all their good intentions, and some would say misguided views on how to help, governments, despite its best intentions, have failed in this project.