In its response to the ICANN Board, DCA Trust disagreed with the GAC Objection Advice.

DotConnectAfrica Trust (DCA Trust), the contending applicant that submitted an independent bid for the .Africa new generic Top-Level Domain name, recently submitted another fulsome response to the ICANN Board of Directors to defend the GAC Objection Advice that was issued against its .Africa new gTLD application by the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) body within ICANN.

It may be recalled that DCA Trust previously submitted a response to the GAC Early Warning in November 2012, and was therefore adequately prepared to articulate another detailed defense and response to the GAC Objection Advice that came out of the ICANN GAC Meeting in Beijing, China.

DCA Trust submitted its response to the GAC Advice within the mandatory 21-day window that any application that has received a GAC Policy Advice is given to respond as per new gTLD Program Guidebook stipulations. The response by DCA Trust was submitted ahead of the general deadline that expired on May 10, 2013. DCA Trust will publish its response document for general circulation after its details are posted publicly by ICANN.

In its response to the ICANN Board, DCA Trust disagreed with the GAC Objection Advice, and noted that its .Africa new application has not received any other Formal Objection on the basis of the four (4) main objection criteria allowed under the new gTLD Program. During the Objection Filing period that expired on March 13, 2013, DCA successfully defended itself against the threat of Community Objection that was issued by the Independent Objector for the ICANN new gTLD Program.

DCA Trust remains confident that the well-argued and compelling response that it has submitted enabled it to further substantiate its case to the ICANN Board of Directors. The new gTLD Applicant's Guidebook provisions suggest that the ICANN Board is not necessarily expected as a rule to follow any GAC Policy Advice that it may receive. This line is also supported by the 'Core Principles' of the ICANN GAC.

DCA Trust therefore remains highly optimistic that the processing of its application by ICANN will continue, and that the ICANN Board would allow DCA Trust's .Africa application to proceed towards Initial Evaluation and Contention Resolution, and that the GAC Objection Advice will not be implemented by the ICANN Board on this occasion.

Notwithstanding, DCA Trust in its response reiterated its strong belief that the only conceivable way forward is for the existing contention situation regarding the .Africa string to be resolved through a process of mutual negotiation and settlement between contending successfully evaluated parties as encouraged by ICANN based on new gTLD Program Guidebook stipulations.

As an independent new gTLD applicant that is participating in the program based on multi-stakeholder principles, DCA Trust would like to reassure its esteemed supporters that the organization shall continue to follow due process mechanisms to ensure that its .Africa new gTLD application remains viable and in contention for the Africa name string until final resolution.

In the interim, DCA Trust intends to continue seeking accountability to ensure that its public grievances and the issues of illegality that it has already highlighted would be given due credence and properly investigated by the authorities.

DCA Trust would like to thank all its supporters for the unstinting moral encouragement and goodwill that it has continued to receive from different sections of the ICANN Global Community.

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More under: ICANN, Internet Governance, Top-Level Domains

The rush is on. Marketers have seen the value in understanding where website visitors are located and personalizing content, such as special offers, pricing or news. Website visitors enjoy a more relevant experience when they receive personalized content — one that speaks to "me." They return the favor with higher click-thru rates and — ultimately — conversions.

If you're shopping for a solution to help you reach these goals, here are four reasons IP geolocation should be at the top of your list. Gleaning high-value business intelligence from IP addresses, geolocation technology delivers BIG where the alternatives fall short.

Personalize web content with or without cookies

With IP geolocation, you can tailor your storefront based on the visitor's country, region or city, and other factors like time of day, current weather or venue (airports, hotels, etc.). While cookies do allow you to customize content, they can present problems. First-party cookies, for example, require you to collect information on the first visit — and asking for information right off the bat can turn off potential buyers. Third-party cookies, meanwhile, collect geolocation and other valuable data, but they are getting a bad reputation due to privacy concerns. Because of concerns related to cookies and privacy, many people use browser tools to block cookies aimed and preventing outside organizations from gaining personal and behavioral data. IP geolocation allows you to customize content for privacy-sensitive users.

Content Localization based on browser settings

Examining the user preferences in the browser can give you basic localization information such as language and time zone. Knowing the time of day visitors are reaching you online, and presenting your content in their preferred language, will ensure a basic level of engagement. Using browser settings is easy, but it does not provide the full impact of localized content that considers regional aspects of language and geography. Improve your message even further by considering variations in dialect and slang. Adjust your focus by knowing whether they are within a coastal, mountain or metropolitan community. IP geolocation provides the capability for more granular, targeted localization.

Locate visitors without the opt-in hassles of GPS apps

In the mobile space, GPS-enabled applications can find the precise location of smartphone users in relation to nearby businesses. Sounds good, especially if you're marketing a local restaurant or store. But here's the rub: these location services are usually opt-in. Users must first decide to let you find them. Again, privacy-minded consumers often say, "no thanks," greatly shrinking your target audience and deflating your campaign. IP geolocation offers a privacy friendly alternative to GPS.

One IP Geo solution that works across all media and environments

Every device that connects to the Internet gets an IP address. Given an IP address, Neustar IP Intelligence can locate the user, many times all the way down to the postal code, without additional software or user intervention, and while respecting user privacy preferences. For more than 10 years we have maintained a database of all routable IP addresses throughout the world. Using IP geolocation, you can manage your customer experience using one technique that works across all user media and environments.

Remember: you only get one first impression. It's important to make the most of it instead of risking the loss of a business opportunity.

IP geolocation, it's the smart way to customize content and show you know your audience. Want more details? Learn more here.

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More under: IP Addressing, Web

The Directi Group, India's largest supplier of domain names, has launched a new internet addressing domain '.IN.NET'. The new privately operated, Indian focused address will offer shorter, more memorable, first choice names which are otherwise hard to find in .com, .net or .in. So for instance, instead of registering mukeshandsons.in or .com, a certain Mr. Mukesh can now register mukesh.in.net as his website address.

With an internet population of over 100 million, India ranks third in the global internet population chart. However, in terms of domain names or internet addresses in use, India is estimated at slightly over 3 million names. This gap is expected to close over the next few years as more businesses, professionals and individuals look to set-up their own website to reach this rapidly growing internet audience.

"Data gathered across all our channels show that over 65% of our customers are not able to get a domain name of their first choice. They are either turning away or settling for a much longer, unattractive name. Our aim is to make name scarcity a non-issue and offer all Indians a short, memorable name at a very affordable price." — Bhavin Turakhia, Founder & Group CEO

.IN.NET will launch with a 42 day Landrush & TM Claims service starting 17th June, 2013, where customers can pre-register for generic, premium names and brand names can block their domain names to prevent cybersquatting. Open registrations on a first-come, first-served basis will start 1st August onwards. The domain will be distributed across all of Directi's properties and other domain registrars around the world.

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More under: Domain Names, Top-Level Domains

Advanced Feature Usage – 48% of Dyn's enterprise customers are utilizing a traffic management service for disaster recovery, cloud load balancing, geographic regional routing, latency-based routing, or our granular geographic IP routing services.As of this post, 48% of Dyn's enterprise customers are utilizing a traffic management service for disaster recovery, cloud load balancing, geographic regional routing, latency-based routing, or our granular geographic IP routing services. All of these services are made powerful by sophisticated monitoring, a robust REST API and a customizable rules engine that puts a deeper level of control into our customers' hands — just how they want it.

If we look even deeper into the actual usage of these advanced features, we see some customers using traffic management on as many as 310 zones. We have some of the data summarized below.

At this point, a significantly higher portion of our customers in the higher traffic tiers use these advanced services:

Advanced Feature Usage by Traffic Tier – The usage of advanced features is especially high in certain verticals of technology companies.The usage of advanced features is especially high in certain verticals of technology companies. Advertising (74%) and Games/Video/Entertainment (60%) particularly stand out.

Today, our customers are creating an Infrastructure stack with redundant providers of colocation, cloud or managed hosting, content delivery, web acceleration, transit, storage/database servers, routers, switches and more. The amount of money spent behind our content agnostic services makes the investment in what we do a simple one. We help prevent vendor lock-in and allow our customers diversity across and down the stack.

The market has caught up and now we innovate on that top 15% as they drive our product roadmap forging ahead. It's a proven way to do R&D and serve a rapidly growing Internet audience who's end user expectations are higher than ever.

As Dyn evolves from a world leading DNS and email delivery provider to a more rounded provider of Internet performance technologies, we'll continue to expose more stats like this (like we did last month with what hosting providers our clients use) and provide even more insight into your entire external infrastructure — traffic, messaging and more. Your customers' experience is on us to help solve.

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More under: Cloud Computing, DNS

Dyn, the worldwide leader in Internet Infrastructure as a Service, announced today it has acquired Trendslide, a mobile dashboard app startup. The acquisition expands Dyn's services to now include mobile data and analytics offerings for online businesses.

While this mobile app was traditionally intended to be a sales/marketing tool, Dyn will now position it as a DevOps tool for its customers.

This move, combined with the acquisition of Verelo in late 2012 and the hiring of Pete Cheslock as Dyn Director of Dev Tools, Donald Layden as Project Manager, Tools, and the promotion of Carl Levine to DevOps Evangelist, is proof that Dyn is committed to being an important voice and part of the DevOps community.

"At the root of Dyn has always been our excellence in engineering," said Kyle York, Dyn Chief Revenue Officer. "We are committed to creating tools that answer the questions of engineers and members of the DevOps community throughout the world. The acquisition of Trendslide is a big step toward that guarantee."

The Trendslide app aggregates data from the websites and apps users already use, and presents a simple graph for a single purpose: to give them a pulse on whether their key metrics are trending up, staying flat, or trending down. Dyn plans to integrate historical DNS and email data into Trendslide, in addition to 3rd party services like Gomez, New Relic, Thousand Eyes, Catchpoint, Keynote, Nagios and more.

In addition to acquiring the IP, co-Founder Benjamin Petrin will join Dyn as a Lead Developer, Tools, with a focus on innovative mobile experiences for Dyn customers.

The acquisition of Trendslide enhances Dyn's commitment to Internet performance, reliability and scalability for more than 500,000 active self sign-up customers, 2500 enterprise customers and over five million users worldwide. This is a firm display that Dyn is diving into mobile technology as Native Push and SMS are two messaging areas the company is considering.

Dyn has a long history with Trendslide as Dyn CTO Cory von Wallenstein was the original investor and helped the company gain early traction and buzz. One of the hottest startups in New Hampshire, the Dyn executives saw an opportunity to acquire Trendslide while an acquisition was still viable as they were poised to raise an additional funding round.

In part, Trendslide's success can be attributed to its strong advisory board, which included Richard Terry-Lloyd, VP of Emerging Markets, Zuora; Eric Hansen, Founder/CEO, SiteSpect; Ryan Burke, VP, Sales, Moontoast; Evan York, Senior Product Manager, Newforma; and Josh Deslisle, VP, Worldwide Sales, Dyn.

"This is a great home for the future of the Trendslide application," added Ron Martin, Trendslide CEO. "As we were looking to raise capital, it was the common opinion of many VCs that this service should stay close to Dyn and focus on Infrastructure — not on marketing and sales analytics. It was good advice, so we decided this was the sensible move. We are happy with this outcome and excited to see the product carry on."

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More under: DNS, Mobile

The Internet Infrastructure Coalition (i2Coalition), a group of global Internet infrastructure providers and technology firms who support the growth of the Internet, introduced Afilias as its newest member. A global leader in advanced registry services, Afilias will be the first registry to join i2Coalition.

"i2Coalition is thrilled to have Afilias, the world's leading provider of technical solutions that make Internet addresses more accessible and useful, on our side as we fight for an open Internet and the environment of growth and innovation that it fosters," said Christian Dawson, i2Coalition co-founder and Board Chair. "Afilias will be the first registry to join i2Coalition, and we are excited to add their global expertise in the field of registry services to our ever-expanding alliance of industry-leading organizations."

i2Coalition is the principal voice and leading advocate for the Internet infrastructure industry, educating the general public about the Internet industry and working with lawmakers to help them understand how public policy might affect the free and open Internet. i2Coalition promotes market-driven standards and facilitates public policy, education and advocacy in an industry-unified voice. Members of i2Coalition will receive the support and tools they need to be heard in Washington and by their state and local officials.

"The Internet continues to grow at a blazing pace, supporting communications and careers for billions of people around the world," said Roland LaPlante, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of Afilias. "And now, with the advent of hundreds of new generic Top-Level Domains about to go live, it is more important than ever to ensure global interoperability on both technical and regulatory levels. We embrace the mission of the Internet Infrastructure Coalition and, as a member, will work closely with other like-minded industry players towards an open Internet that works for everybody."

About i2Coalition

The Internet Infrastructure Coalition (i2Coalition) supports those who build the nuts and bolts of the Internet, and we treat it like the noble profession that it is. We believe the continued growth of the Internet is vital for growing an environment of innovation in America and seek to engage in ways to foster success of the Internet and Internet infrastructure industry. We seek to influence decision makers to weigh decisions on whether they are good or bad for the Internet economy and its foundational industries. In short, we seek to foster growth within the Internet infrastructure industry by driving others to harness the Internet's full potential. To learn more about i2Coalition, visit www.i2Coalition.com.

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More under: Registry Services

Radix Registry, the new TLD Company of Directi, has passed the initial evaluation stage on 4 of its TLD applications, .blog, .hotel, .online and .insurance.

Directi, a global leader in Internet products and Web services, under its new brand Radix had applied for 31 strings comprising several generic and mass market names. A month back, it was announced that Directi, Tucows and Namecheap will join forces to manage the .online registry, the string which successfully cleared the initial evaluation as mentioned earlier.

"All the hard work went into exploring every minute detail in building the application has paid off. Each application was custom made as per the TLD and we didn't follow the cookie cutter approach like others", said Bhavin Turakhia, CEO of RadixRegistry.

The applications which are next in line are .hosting, .music and .city. "Apart from customizing the applications, meeting all the ICANN prescribed standards also helped us to successfully clear the Initial Evaluations", added Mr. Turakhia.

Radix, the largest applicant from the Asia-Pacific Region, is the sole ICANN gTLD applicant for the .space, .press and .host strings. Radix previously announced that it has invested $30 million in to the application process. To know more about the strings they have applied for, visit http://radixregistry.com/.

About Radix
Radix FZC is a Directi Business whose mission is to become the registry operator of a variety of top level domains. Radix will be an active participant in ICANN's process to expand the Internet naming system, and will aim to obtain rights to operate several new generic domains. Radix will leverage Directi's rich domain expertise, and will be led by an able team that has helped flourish some of Directi's existing registrar and web hosting businesses.

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More under: Domain Names, Registry Services, ICANN, Top-Level Domains

RegistryPRO, the ICANN-designated operator of the .PRO top-level domain and a subsidiary of leading registry services provider Afilias, today announced that DomainsBot, the leading domain name suggestion and search engine company, will now include .PRO in their domain name search and suggestion tool, used by the majority of the world's best-known Internet domain name retailers, including 101Domains, Blacknight, MeshDigital, Net4In and Tucows.

With the growing need to differentiate an individual's business and skills on the Internet, the .PRO domain gives professionals who need a website a one-of-a-kind address that helps them to brand themselves as the professionals they are. The inclusion of .PRO in the market-leading DomainsBot domain search tool demonstrates the growing popularity of .PRO as a global identifier of professional status.

DomainsBot's "name spinner" tool is designed to help developers, site owners and marketers find available domain names when a first-choice domain name is already registered. DomainsBot offers a wide variety of results — including domain names that are available, expiring and for sale — to ensure that professionals can easily find the best domain name available.

"The inclusion of .PRO into the DomainsBot search and suggestion tool is another milestone in the success of the .PRO TLD," said Roland LaPlante, CMO of Afilias. "More professionals are setting up websites every day, and the integrity of .PRO sets it apart in the world of Internet addresses. All .PRO registrants must certify that they meet strict eligibility requirements, and may be required to submit proof to the registry. To further ensure the integrity of .PRO, all registrations are subject to .PRO's monitoring and verification process."

"As the Internet continues to grow, so does the need for distinct professional branding. Given that, we felt it was important to include .PRO domains as part of our services," said Daniel Ruzzini Mejia, Co-Founder & CSO, DomainsBot. "The .PRO domain now plays a significant role on the Web; we wanted to ensure our customers could take advantage of the branding benefits that come with the .PRO domain."

To qualify to register a .PRO domain, registrants may be asked to provide their professional credentials to confirm they meet eligibility requirements, which include providing professional services, being validated by a government certification body or government-recognized jurisdictional entity and being in good standing with its authority. In addition, registrants may be asked to provide identification, contact information and profession-specific information like ID numbers.

About DomainsBot
Since 1999, DomainsBot — a privately held company headquartered in Rome, Italy — has lead the "domain name suggestions" market with its self-learning Semantic Engine, a one-of-a-kind domain name search technology. As a supplier of domain name suggestion products to the majority of the world's best-known Internet domain name retailers, DomainsBot offers a unique and powerful way for Technology and Marketing professionals to search for domain names with suggestions that embody the concepts sought by the customer. To learn how to integrate DomainsBot offerings into the domain registration process, visit http://www.domainsbot.com/partners.

About RegistryPRO
RegistryPRO, a subsidiary of Dublin,IE-based Afilias, is the ICANN-designated operator of the .PRO top-level domain: the Internet for Professionals. Since launching in 2004, .PRO has emerged as an important tool for businesses, organizations and individuals in building trusted relationships throughout the world. In many languages, "pro" is synonymous with dedication, skill, and vision; the .PRO name allows people to capture that distinctive character. Whether developing a brand, refining an identity, or promoting a specialty, .PRO offers businesses and professionals the opportunity to enhance their image by adding a powerful, easy-to-identify name to their online presence and Web-based products. To learn more, visit http://registry.pro.

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More under: Domain Names, Registry Services, Top-Level Domains

The International Trademark Association's Annual Meeting is quickly approaching and we're excited to join the Intellectual Property community to share insights. Since the last meeting, we've been witnessing a sea of change and we expect these changes to continue. ICANN's launch of new gTLDs and the Trademark Clearinghouse mark a new set of challenges and possible opportunities for brands as they manage their domain portfolios and Internet presence in the expanded namespace. INTA 2013 is a great forum to learn how to navigate these changes and how they will affect your trademarks, brands and business.

There are many fascinating sessions throughout the conference but we're especially eager to hear from our peers discussing the new gTLDS and other intellectual property issues in the digital world. Monday's midday session, CM20 Do We Have Launch? Assessment of the New gTLD Program, will provide a well-rounded discussion of the current state of the program as it becomes reality, including a review of how the new gTLDs will impact ICANN's governance structure. On Tuesday afternoon, representatives of ICANN will join a panel discussion, CT53 New gTLDs: Brand Strategies in Cyberspace, to review best practices for securing brand equity in this historic expansion, including a discussion of the recently-launched Trademark Clearinghouse.

On another digital front, Monday morning's session, CM02 Social Media: Sidestepping Problems & Pitfalls, uses a hypothetical company's active social media presence to offer insights into privacy, confidentiality and defamation issues as well as trademark and copyright issues in these vitally important digital channels.

The line-up of table topics covers global enforcement strategies, social media, and brand protection issues from a variety of perspectives. A particularly interesting session comes from a mobile perspective and will be offered by a colleague from Thomson Reuters on Sunday at midday, TS58 Tools of the Trade: Mobile Tools for Trademark Workflow.

We look forward to seeing our intellectual property and trademark colleagues in Dallas for the wealth of information offered at this annual meeting as well as the opportunity to network and share best practices. We will be in the Thomson Reuters booth at INTA this year and will also have dedicated meeting facilities for individual discussions. If you will be at INTA this year and would like to set up a meeting with the MarkMonitor team, please contact: Eileen (dot) Carey (at) MarkMonitor (dot) com.

See you in Dallas!

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More under: Domain Names, Law, Top-Level Domains

We recently did a study where we looked at where our customers' websites are hosted, so we could get a better glimpse into the web hosting space. We also looked at the market share numbers for top traffic websites by Alexa Ranking, and also for large enterprises.

Here are some of our key takeaways:

• The top 15 hosting providers together accounted for under 35% of where our customers are hosted.
• This means the remaining 65% are either self-hosted or are using smaller hosting providers.
• These numbers go further when we look at a wide cross-section of Alexa websites: 25% for the Alexa 10K and 21% for the Alexa 100K.

Amazon AWS, Rackspace and Softlayer clearly hold the top three spots for market share.

Here's what we found, thanks to some great insight from our friends at Datanyze:

DynECT Customers

About 22% of our 2000+ DynECT enterprise level customers are hosted at either Amazon AWS, Rackspace and Softlayer with Amazon ranking No. 1.

Alexa 10K and Alexa 100K

Next up: Alexa 10K and 100K segments. Did we see any interesting patterns?

• AWS and Softlayer seem to have the highest market share in the Alexa 10K segment.
• Softlayer has the largest share in in the broader & lower traffic Alexa 100K segment.
• As expected, lower-priced hosting sites like GoDaddy, Ovh, and Hetzner had relatively higher market share in the Alexa 100K than in the Alexa 10K websites.

Large Enterprises

For this study, it was important for us to review websites with high traffic. However, we also wanted to look at where the large enterprises were hosted, defined as any company with more than 1000 employees. We looked at a total of 25K such enterprises globally for this analysis.

The total penetration for this segment is about 11.3%, with the graph below showing Rackspace with thrice the market share as the next largest provider. This will be an interesting market segment to keep an eye on.

Our conclusions

We'll use this unique to Dyn customer hosting data to improve DynECT Managed DNS and Traffic Management services, prospect more joint accounts, and forge strong hosting partnerships with shared vendors of our esteemed clients. Amazon AWS, Rackspace and Softlayer prove to be glaringly obvious collaborative partners, but the opportunity for lower cost or specialized hosting providers to layer on a premium DNS services is equally apparent (see our favorites and host of Dyn.com, Firehost).

Using Managed DNS and DNS-based Traffic Management (load balancing) services as a performance facilitator, traffic controller, hosting redundancy enabler and overall abstraction layer for content delivery is on the rise. Contact us if there are any other interesting studies you'd like us to research and share.

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More under: Cloud Computing, DNS, Web

Neustar Second Annual DDoS 2012 Survey
Download full survey: PDFLast year, Neustar reported on the DDoS landscape during 2011. This year, it surveyed IT pros on their experiences in 2012. Did the threat of DDoS grow or shrink? What were the costs of downtime? In total, were companies better prepared to protect their websites and their brands?

In comparing threats to readiness, the answers weren't encouraging:

• DDoS attacks continue to grow in frequency and impact
• While a handful of massive attacks dominated the headlines — especially in the banking industry, where many suspect the hand of unfriendly nation-states — most DDoS attacks are less than 100Mbps in size
• As in 2011, over 1/3 of attacks lasted longer than 24 hours, extending downtime, customer complaints and mitigation costs
• Connecting the dots: it doesn't take a mega-attack to cause lasting damage, merely well-planned strikes on poorly defended websites
• While more companies are investing in some type of DDoS protection...
• Most still rely on firewalls and other traditional solutions that get bottlenecked during attacks and accelerate outages

Most Frequent Ddos Victims – As in 2011, financial and ecommerce businesses were the most frequent DDoS victims. Last year, 32% of financial organizations reported being attacked. In 2012, the number increased to 44%. Starting in Q3 2012 and continuing to the present, banks in particular have suffered large, disruptive attacks, with specialized botnets such as "itsoknoproblembro" amplifying the destructive impact.
(Source: Neustar 2012 DDoS Survey)The data reported here is from a wide-ranging survey, not from Neustar's network monitoring or DDoS mitigation efforts. The data reflects the realities faced by diverse IT professionals across numerous industries, among companies large and small. It shows the real challenge most companies face today: how to gauge the threat clearly and respond within their means.

Among the key findings from the survey, 35% of organizations experienced a disruptive DDoS attack in 2012. Of those surveyed, 39% of retailers and 41% of ecommerce businesses experienced an attack last year. Additionally, more than a quarter of respondents (26%) indicated a DDoS outage could cost between $50-100k per hour, further showcasing the need for a strategy around DDoS protection and mitigation.

Additional survey findings include:

• Key sectors reported higher rates of attack: The number of retailers experiencing an attack increased by 144% from 2011 levels to reach an overall level of 39% in 2012; financial organizations experienced a 38% increase in attacks year-to-year with 44% of financial organizations being victimized in 2012.
• Though more companies are deploying DDoS protection — only 8% had no protections in place compared to 25% in 2011 — few have invested in purpose-built hardware or third-party expertise.
• The latter is alarming; while 66% of companies use firewalls, routers and switches for DDoS protection, these networking products create bottlenecks that actually aid attackers.

How long did DDos attacks last?

2012 Annual DDoS Attacks & Impact Infographic – To see how DDoS attacks affected businesses in 2012, Neustar surveyed over 700 IT pros. Comparing 2012 results with out 2011 survey, it's clear that many people are still hoping and wishing and praying they can solve a complex problem with old-school solutions. (Click to Enlarge Image)Tracking with last year’s results, survey found over a third of all DDoS attacks lasted more than 24 hours: 37% in 2012 versus 35% in 2011. Some attacks stretched out for several days or even longer — with 20% of attacks lasting between 3 days and 7+ days. The longest attacks, those lasting over a week, increased from 10% in 2011 to 13% in 2012.

According to Christian A. Christiansen, Chris Liebert and Charles J. Kolodgy of IDC Research, in a February 2013 report, entitled The Business Value of Hybrid Cloud-based Compromise Intelligence Monitoring and Threat Mitigation, "Given the complex nature of today's threats, enterprises can achieve a strategic advantage by employing a new layer of security that is services based. Cloud-based services are an important aspect of this approach to security and provide always-on monitoring without the added expense of buying and maintaining on-premise equipment."

Download a copy of the full survey here.

About Neustar siteProtect
Learn How Neustar Technology Can Block DDoS AttacksNeustar SiteProtect offers intelligent DDoS protection, blending the people, processes and technologies to stop today's complex attacks. Using battle-tested procedures and best-of-breed equipment, the experts in the Neustar Security Operations Center work swiftly to eliminate downtime and protect your brand.

Based in the cloud, SiteProtect offers 24/7 on-demand traffic scrubbing. Immediately accessible through DNS or BGP redirection, it provides instant relief from DDoS attacks involving network Layer 3, application Layer 7, IPv6 and/or encrypted traffic — or any combination of these takedown methods. SiteProtect reroutes traffic to unclog your network, filters malicious traffic and permits valid traffic to return to your infrastructure.

Built on a dedicated, globally distributed Anycast network, SiteProtect can be instantly deployed and remains activated until the danger is gone. With SiteProtect handling the DDoS, your responses remain nimble and in sync with customer requests. Online business continues even as the attack unfolds.

For larger organizations, SiteProtect is an ideal complement to in-house mitigation hardware. As a cloud-based failover solution, SiteProtect provides the bandwidth to absorb malicious traffic and enables you to launch countermeasures in real time. Using a hybrid approach, you can leverage your investments in DDoS detection and alerting, avoid outages and minimize disruptions.

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More under: Cyberattack, DDoS, Security

The .PW Registry today announced that more than 50,000 .PW domain names were registered in just 3 weeks since the beginning of its General Availability phase.

.PW, launched as "the Professional Web", was available for General registrations from March 25, 2013 with a strong distribution channel of 120+ ICANN Registrars including Network Solutions, Web.com, Tucows, Name.com, eNom, Xinnet & Namecheap. The registry saw more than 4,000 .pw domain registrations within 30 minutes of its launch, making it the most successful TLD launch post .XXX.

"Our goal was 100,000 names for the first year. Considering that no competing extension had come anywhere close to achieving 100,000 names in the first year, it was a goal that most considered ambitious. The feeling of achieving 50% of the goal within the first three weeks is surreal. The team put together and executed a brilliant marketing plan. We are eagerly looking forward to leveraging this experience for our new gTLDs", said Bhavin Turakhia, CEO, .PW Registry & Radix Registry.

.PW also bagged some respectable premium name deals with two single character names going for $8,000 each. The company now intends to release all its reserved premium names through BIN sales at BuyDomains and themed auctions at NameJet.

About Directi:
With over a decade in the internet industry, Directi is a $350m+ group of businesses, providing various web products and services to millions of global users. Directi businesses include ResellerClub, LogicBoxes, BigRock, Skenzo, Media.net and Radix Registry. Over 1000 employee strong, Directi currently has 5 offices across 4 countries. Directi businesses rank amongst the fastest growing businesses worldwide in their corresponding industry segments. For more information, please visit http://www.directi.com.

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More under: Domain Names, ICANN, Top-Level Domains

Michael Boustridge joins Dyn's Board of DirectorsDyn, the worldwide leader in Internet Infrastructure as a Service, announced today that Michael Boustridge, has been added to its Board of Directors.

Boustridge is the former President of BT Global Services, a company that delivers a combination of communications and IT services to customers organizations and governments worldwide. He joined BT Global Services in April 2007, assuming responsibility for all aspects of their operations and performance in the United States and Canada and Financial Services and finally running all of the Global MNC (MultiNational Customer) business.

"Michael brings a long-term view of technology and insight into how larger companies operate that will help us navigate our future," said Jeremy Hitchcock, Dyn CEO.

The addition of Boustridge to Dyn's board is another nod toward the company's continued focus on international expansion and the development of new enterprise channels — two specialties of the Texas-based tech legend.

"When joining a board, I want to associate myself with companies that are applying innovative approaches to technology and solving real world problems," Boustridge said. "I have found both of those with Dyn. This is a company with an amazing track record and an even brighter future. I am happy to be playing a small role in helping guide that future."

Prior to the BT run, he was the Chief Sales and Chief Marketing Officer at EDS, an information technology equipment and services company founded by Ross Perot, where he led the company's $22 billion global revenue sales engine.

In addition, Boustridge is member of the Board of Trustees for XPRIZE Foundation, an educational nonprofit organization with the mission to bring about radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity, as well as other high tech companies. He also sits on the board of Riverbed Technology, Inc., Ciber, Contact Solutions LLC, Presidio and Cyan.

Boustridge joins a board that already includes:

• Jeremy Hitchcock, Dyn CEO and co-founder
• Jason Calacanis, founder and CEO of Mahalo, co-founder of ThisWeekIn, co-founder and former CEO of Weblogs, Inc. (acq. by AOL) and a respected angel investor
• Ric Fulop, General Partner at North Bridge and co-founder of A123 Systems
• Russ Pyle, General Partner at North Bridge
• Scott Dussault, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Demandware

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DCA's application for .Africa new gTLD received an ICANN GAC Policy Advice Objection which the organization hopes to resolve by following the due process provisions within the ICANN new gTLD Program.

The DotConnectAfrica Trust delegation led by its Executive Director/CEO, Ms. Bekele participated and contributed at various sessions of the ICANN 46 International Meeting held in Beijing China from 7th - 11th April 2013.

Beijing, is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. Beijing is China's second largest city by urban population after Shanghai and is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's largest state-owned companies and is also a major transportation hub.

ICANN 46 Beijing International Meeting
Image Source: ICANNThe ICANN 46th meeting broke the record and was rated as the largest meeting ever with more than 2,100 people showing up against 1,821 who attended the Prague meeting in the Czech Republic in June 2012. ICANN President and Chief Executive Officer Fadi Chehadé also announced that the organization would open its first new global engagement office in Beijing. “Engagement with China is not merely an option, we simply must engage at every level or we will lose our legitimacy,” said Chehadé. “This is part of our effort to embrace the world.”

This meeting also saw the introduction of a seasoned international executive named to lead ICANN Communications Team. Duncan Burns has been introduced to guide rapidly expanding communications efforts. “Duncan has the international experience and leadership skills we need" said Sally Costerton, ICANN’s Senior Advisor to the President for Global Stakeholder Engagement.

The announcement of ICANN’s expanding presence in China was heralded by Chinese Internet leaders. “Our Internet future will now be brilliant,” said Madam Hu Qiheng, the President of the Internet Society of China. “This is a bridge for ICANN and China and it will lead to greater expansion of Internet development.” ICANN Board Chair Dr. Stephen Crocker pointed out the dramatic growth of Internet users in China in the past decade.  “In the past decade, Internet use has increased ten fold,” said Crocker. “There are now 564 million Internet users in China and that is expected to climb sharply in the future.”

The ICANN 46 comes at a time when the governmental representatives on the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) are giving their policy advice to the ICANN Board on different applications.  DCA's application for .Africa new gTLD received an ICANN GAC Policy Advice Objection which the organization hopes to resolve by following the due process provisions within the ICANN new gTLD Program. 

Mr. Shang Bing, Vice Minister of the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information, has also delivered a speech at the opening session, saying that "the Internet has become key infrastructure for development in information age" He continued to say that "and we will improve all the monitoring, the security, the user rights and fair, honest market environment". “We are confident that the Beijing meeting will be an impressive one, and a milestone in the development of the Chinese community and Internet.” added Ms. Limei Liu from China Organizational Name Administration Center (CONAC).

Ms. Bekele remains confident that the processing of the .Africa new gTLD application that DotConnectAfrica has submitted would continue and successfully move towards delegation in the not too distant future.  According to the DCA Trust Executive Director/CEO: "we are following a structured process, and the GAC Policy Advice is by no means the end of the matter."

ICANN has also got a head way due to its involvement at a closer level in decentralizing and globalizing its programs and delegates hope that these efforts will go a long way in making ICANN understood all over the world and especially African governments .

DotConnectAfrica Project Support Engineer Mr. Gideon Rop also had an opportunity to speak as a panelist for the NPOC Beijing Meeting - Role of Youth in the DNS, where he explained that the role of the youth was increasingly becoming an important facet in Internet governance.  He pointed out that apart from the traditional ICT duties that required trained skills, the youth also have an important role in the utilization of Social Media networks which is now a niche platform for content development, sourcing, advocacy and education.

The ICANN Beijing was a successful meeting in many ways and DotConnectAfrica hopes that these developments will further consolidate Internet development and advancement.

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I recently discovered HBO's new hit show, The Newsroom, which follows a team behind a nightly cable news program in their quest — in the name of ethical journalism — to deliver the best and most truthful news coverage to viewers. If you're a fan of the show, you likely can understand how it made me think about how we consume, digest and respond to all of the information that media throws at us. Between the emails, embedded hyperlinks, tweets, pop-up banners, and mobile app notifications constantly popping up in our day-to-day lives, how do we cut through the clutter to differentiate between what's important?

And when we need the facts, where are we most likely to turn for credible, reliable information?

So where do you turn for the most trusted source of information for a cause or charity? Would it be through social media or the organization's website? We recently conducted a survey through ORC International to measure the level of trust consumers have in .ORG and their sentiments towards other online resources, such as social media, and found that 82% of survey respondents still think a website is the most trustworthy place to get information on a charity or social cause. Despite the growing rise and popularity of organizational social media pages and accounts, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn were respectively ranked second, third and fourth most trustworthy

At Public Interest Registry, we fully believe in the power of the Internet as a useful medium to spread knowledge, ideas and support for the common good. As the not-for-profit-operator of the .ORG domain, we have a responsibility to help maintain the integrity of the Internet by providing a trusted place online for organizations, companies and individuals to tell their stories and to mobilize their communities.

We were pleased to find that a large majority of all respondents (90%) associate a .ORG web address with the words "non-profit," "trusted," "exclusive," or a combination of all three. Furthermore, nearly half (49%) of the respondents polled would choose to purchase a .ORG domain to relay information about a cause that they were passionate about. Other key findings include:

• Assuming there are four websites, all with similar content but each with a different domain name, 39% of all respondents surveyed indicated they would trust .ORG the most; 23% chose .COM and 25% said they would trust them all equally (.ORG, .COM, .INFO, .NET).
• In a time of crisis, 33% of all respondents would look for information on a .ORG, followed by .COM (31%) and .INFO (17%).

While these survey findings certainly help us validate our daily efforts to give more causes around the world a trusted online venue, they also demonstrate how audiences seek to connect with these causes and communities across the many Internet options available. As hundreds of new generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs) become available online in the months ahead, Public Interest Registry is working with the global community of non-profit and NGOs to ensure that the transformations coming to the Internet expand the opportunities for organizations and their causes around the world.

Written by Thuy LeDinh, Senior Marketing Communications Manager

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Learn about the diverse technologies Neustar uses to Mitigate DDoS attacks quickly and effectively. The seasoned DDoS fighters in the Neustar Security Operations Center explain the need for a full toolset to combat complex attacks. Listen as some of the world's top DDoS experts break it down in plain English to help you grasp your options.

Transcript

DDOS can happen, it can strike at anytime, around the clock, 24/7.

There's so much out there. There are so many unknowns. Everyday there's some new variant of some new botnet coming out. You have to be constantly on your toes at this job

The reality is that the technology and the threat have changed so much over the last year and a half that anything you bought 2 years ago is pretty much irrelevant. A lot of people fall for the marketing if I have a firewall I think I can automatically withstand a DDOS, if I have an IPS or an IDS I believe that I can deal with these things.

However this doesn't always work and it's not the best solution because the largest floods and types of attacks can actually overwhelm a firewall or an intrusion detection service and just pass right through.

What people need to realize is their hosting company isn't going to protect them if they get a large enough attack. That hosting company is going to shut you off so that they can protect their overall infrastructure and that's the one great thing about SiteProtect is we are solely invested in protecting you.

The model that we use for SiteProtect and what differentiates it versus what else is in the market and often what we hear from customers is our architecture is far reaching. The technology that we use is diverse in nature. So we're not just using firewalls, we're not just using IPS, we're not just using purpose built gear. We're bringing all of that to the forefront to fight attacks on behalf of our customers.

Neustar takes all of the devices and all of the technologies that we have and can kind of mesh them together and to blend them together to get the most effective mitigation in place.

Attacks continue to evolve every day. Everyone knows that in the industry so it's important that you bring to the table technology that can deal with those sophisticated often application layer attacks. And that's what we offer with SiteProtect.

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dot Brand or dot What? Afilias new gTLDs research report 2013 – The results of the report are designed to help organizations who have already purchased (or who intend to purchase) their own gTLDs understand consumer concerns in relation to the new domains and how they can overcome any apprehensions end users have to ensure "dot Brands" will be accepted and embraced in the internet ecosystem.
(Click to Download Report)Afilias research reveals 75 percent of UK and US consumers oblivious to new Web extensions

Afilias Limited, a global provider of domain registry services, has announced the results of research on consumer attitudes towards the hundreds of new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) that will launch beginning in 2013. The results? At this moment, the major online initiative where companies like Google, Microsoft, Nike and Amazon will create and use their own "dot Brand" domains to promote their websites has fallen on deaf ears among the UK and US public.

The program, in which 1,000-plus new gTLDs will be launched by organizations and household brands, was only known by 21 percent of UK adults and 22 percent of US adults. Internet governing body ICANN created the new gTLD program to foster innovation and improve consumer security on the Internet. However, the research revealed that 73 percent of UK adults would prefer to visit traditional Web addresses like "www.adidas.com/shop" rather than "www.shop.adidas." In the US, 61 percent of adults would prefer to use a "heritage" gTLD.

The results have been published in Afilias' "dot Brand or dot What?" report, which polled 2,054 UK and 2,000 US consumers in conjunction with YouGov, examining perceptions about and understanding of the new gTLDs.

"The advent of new TLDs coming over the months ahead will result in major changes to the Internet. Some of the world's best-known companies will roll out a dot Brand extension, but our research shows consumers are unaware that these changes are coming and would avoid the new gTLDs due to their unfamiliarity," said Roland LaPlante, CMO, Afilias. "However, the new gTLDs offer consumers great benefits, such as reducing the risk of purchasing counterfeit goods online. Our research demonstrates that businesses need to seriously consider the ways that they will integrate the new gTLDs into their online strategies and how they will educate consumers about their benefits."

Consumer Response To: Companies will soon be able to run their own website addresses and not have to use .com, .co.uk, etc. For example, imagine "sale.nike" instead of "www.nike.com/sale." were you aware that these new website addresses were being introduced?The survey also found that UK and US consumers have trepidation concerning Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs), domains that use non-Roman characters (as in Russian, Chinese and Devanagari.) Only eight percent of UK and US consumers recognized IDNs as domains designed for foreign-language communities while 65 percent of UK consumers and 60 percent of US respondents said they would navigate away from IDNs. This figure reaches more than 70 percent for "over 55s" in both markets.

LaPlante added, "Education is also needed to ensure the growth and support of IDNs. Consumers should understand that if a domain name isn't written in a script they recognize, it doesn't mean the site is dangerous. In reality, websites using IDNs will create an improved, more relevant Web experience for consumers around the world."

The Afilias "dot Brand or dot What?" report is available for downloading from the Afilias website.

Afilias provides registry and DNS services for more than 21 million domains, including seven million .INFO domains and one million .MOBI domains registered worldwide. In addition, Afilias supports .ORG, .AERO, .ASIA, .PRO, .AG (Antigua and Barbuda), .BZ (Belize), .GI (Gibraltar), .IN (India), .LC (St. Lucia), .ME (Montenegro), .MN (Mongolia), .SC (the Seychelles), .VC (St. Vincent and the Grenadines) and .XXX.

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April 02, 2013, Zodiac Holdings Limited ("Zodiac"), the largest Chinese TLD applicant, is pleased to announce that 6 of its new gTLD applications have successfully passed the Initial Evaluation.

The results for八卦 (gossip) and 集团 (conglomerate) were announced on March 23, 2013 and 网店 (online shop), 商城 (mall), 我爱你 (i-love-you) and 娱乐 (entertainment) were announced on March 30, 2013.

"Applications that pass Initial Evaluation may be eligible to proceed to contracting with the execution of the Registry Agreement as early as 23 April 2013.", according to ICANN. Zodiac looks forward to signing the Registry Agreement with ICANN and to offer these new gTLDs to the market as soon as possible.

In January 2013, renowned industry veteran Wang Jian (Mack), former General Manager of Xinnet, joined Zodiac as COO. Mr Wang was the Vice President of HiChina and General Manager of Xinnet — the two largest registrars in China today. During his tenure at Xinnet, he led the commercialization of virtual private server (VPS) leasing services. At HiChina, Mr Wang was entrusted to set up the cloud solution Business Division, with the solution entering the market within 4 months.

Another domain name industry veteran, Tang Li Hong, has joined Zodiac as Vice President of Operation. Mdm Tang spent the last 10 years at HiChina. During her tenure at HiChina, Mdm Tang led the effort in standardization and automation of the back-end operation of HiChina. Her team of nearly 200 staff has won numerous company awards for efficiency and customer support. Mdm Tang will be responsible for Zodiac's service operation.

In addition, Zodiac recently appointed Allan Ma as the group's General Counsel. Formerly with Cadwaladar, Wickersham & Taft LLP (Beijing) and King & Wood Mallesons (Hong Kong), Mr Ma has in-depth experience in cross-border transactions and is specialized in venture capital, private equity, corporate finance and corporate structuring

These new additions, joining the existing team of former CNNIC staffs including ex-Deputy Director of CNNIC Eugene Li, bring impressive domain name industry experience and will further bolster the Zodiac team and readiness to market."

"With the release of the Initial Evaluation Results, Zodiac will continue to rapidly expand our team in China.", Mr. James Seng, the CEO of Zodiac commented. "There is tremendous excitement and anticipation for our new gTLDs in China so we would like to be the first to market."

Zodiac is also announcing its "China Advisory Services" for new gTLD applicants who are interested in entering China domain name market.

China has the largest Internet population in the world, estimated to be around 560 million. China is also the second largest world economy with a GDP of US$8300 billion and over 50 million registered companies. According to Verisign's December 2012 Domain Name Market brief, the ccTLD for China (.CN) has the highest quarter-to-quarter growth of 43%.

On 7th April 2013 during ICANN 46th meeting in Beijing, Zodiac will be hosting a seminar titled "A New Beginning - Domain Name Market in China”. Speakers are well-known experts in China domain name industry from the Internet Society of China, the China Domain Name Promotion Alliance, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and others.

While China offers tremendous opportunities, it also presents many challenges for a foreign company. Founded in 2008, Zodiac has accumulated unique experiences and broad contacts in China. Zodiac's China Advisory Services look forward to work with new gTLD applicants to exploit the China domain name market.

For more information, please contact advisory@zodiacregistry.com

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The 11th Innovation Africa Digital Summit with the theme: "National Broadband Strategies and Agendas: Acceleration and Alignment" was held in Addis Ababa the capital city of Ethiopia from 19thto 21st March 2013. The special three-day event was attended by senior ministers, policy makers,corporate executives, regulators, telecommunications operators and service providers; major end users, finance companies and international agencies.

The Internet Business Council for Africa (IBCA) and DotConnectAfrica Trust were represented at the event. Also in attendance was the Ethiopian State Minister for Communications and Information Technology, H.E. Ato Peter Gat Koukt, who noted that his government recognizes the importance of developing Information and Communications Technologies to eradicate poverty. He also emphasized that "even though Ethiopia already achieved tremendous results in the use of ICT tools, ensuring adequate ICT access to all, and, in particular, providing affordable access to ICT infrastructure and services to rural communities remains a daunting challenge".

The three-day Summit was jointly organized by the Ethiopian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and Extensia Ltd, a bespoke events management and special programme services firm based in the UK. The keynote presentation was made by Mr. Andrew Rugege, Director of the ITU Regional Office for Africa who discussed the Broadband target aimed at 50 per cent penetration by the year 2015 in the developing countries. He congratulated Microsoft Corporation for their low end phones and also commended VMK African-designed tablet computers and local contents recommended by UNESCO and OECD to be used by local content and services providers in Multi-language use of the web. He also discussed the Broadband and Mobile Internet Revolution, which accounts for nearly 6 billion users globally, and noted that currently, the mobile telecommunications revolution has experienced a remarkable uptake in Africa.

During the Universal Access Panel discussions, Ms. Sophia Bekele who represented DCA Registry Services Ltd. at the IAD Summit, took the opportunity to clarify to the august audience that during this new gTLD application window, two (2) bids were actually submitted to ICANN for the .africa (DotAfrica) new gTLD by two different competitors. Ms. Bekele explained that both bids have been placed by ICANN in the same Exact Matching Contention Set, and used the same opportunity to clarify that contrary to the misconception that was being given to the audience that Uniforum ZA Central Registry was the only .Africa applicant, DotConnectAfrica Trust also applied directly to ICANN for the mandate to operate the .Africa new gTLD registry.

Ms. Bekele, who is also a former gNSO Policy advisor to Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) for generic domain names and has helped to champion the introduction of Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) at ICANN, further noted that "DCA Trust has always tried its best to clarify and inform people, especially in Africa, regarding how the ICANN new gTLD process operates in order to correct the wrongly held view that it is the African Union Commission (AUC) which has the authorized mandate to delegate the DotAfrica new gTLD".

She strongly emphasized that DotAfrica as an Internet new gTLD resource rightly belongs to ICANN, and that the entire new gTLD program is governed by ICANN under a globally approved process." Ms. Bekele said she felt compelled to clarify these matters in order to correct the wrong impression that was being conveyed by the UniForum representative, Koffi Fabrice Djossou that the AUC has jurisdiction to delegate DotAfrica outside the ICANN's process. Ms. Bekele was quite definite in her position that the final decision on DotAfrica new gTLD will be made by ICANN, and not by the African Union.

Mr Bashir Gwandu, Chairman of the ITU Commonwealth Group, who was also on the Universal Access Panel, responded to questions from the audience on whois the most appropriate body to manage the Internet between ICANN and ITU.His response 'if it is not broken why fix it' was lauded by Ms. Bekele and followed by many others. Mr. Gwandu reiterated that he does not favor any form of government intervention in matters of Internet Governance.

DotConnectAfrica Trust has for a long time championed a multi-stakeholder environment at global ICANN and within the AfrICANN Community, and believes that governments should not be involved in the management of new gTLDs. As a matter of fact, ICANN expects the new gTLDs to be managed and administered by registry services operations businesses.

Responding to a participant's request for further clarifications regarding the major differences between the two contrasting bids for DotAfrica, DCA explained that Uniforum in its application submitted to ICANN has already given away the legal rights to the .africa registry databases and all intellectual property to the AU, which explains why Uniforum was calling it an AU initiative, the same view that was held by the NEPAD representative who was also a panelist.

DCA Trust has always maintained that all the rights to the new DotAfrica gTLD including the registry databases, rightfully belongs to ICANN according to the stipulations of the new gTLD Program and the associated new gTLD Registry Services Agreement, and that the African Union and UniForum cannot act outside these specifications that have been legally codified and approved.

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The .PW Registry today announced the general availability of .PW domain names, which will enable anyone from anywhere to establish their professional presence online. The newest TLD on the block has fast gained worldwide acceptance with over 110 active registrars signing up from 32 countries to offer .PW domain names to customers.

Launched as the Professional Web at the ICANN Meeting in Toronto, .PW is a new namespace operated by the Directi Group and is meant for professionals around the world looking for first-choice domain names to establish their online identity at an affordable price point. The Registry received more than 4000 orders within 30 minutes of the General Availability launch.

"The internet space is getting cramped with thousands of new users going online every day. Distinguishing your online identity from this crowd is getting harder. With com, net, org and other major TLDs running out of quality domain names, .PW provides customers with short, generic and first-choice domain names to stand out from the rest of the crowd", said Bhavin Turakhia, Founder and CEO of the Directi Group.

The extended Sunrise period saw many Fortune 500 brands like Apple, Pfizer, Volkswagen and Nokia securing their trademarks in the .PW namespace. Similarly, the Landrush phase attracted a lot of interests from domainers with more than 8000 quality names being released from the reserve list.

"We thank all our Registrar partners for the support, as .PW is now available to more than 25 million customers worldwide through them", added Mr. Turakhia.

.PW domain names can only be registered via their list of accredited registrars which includes industry stalwarts such as eNom, Network Solutions, Register.com, InterNetX, Key-Systems, Name.com, ResellerClub, Domain Monster and many more.

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