Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has warned four domain name registrars that they are in breach of the terms of their accreditation agreement, and has given them 15 working days to cure the breaches.

Three of the registrars are in breach of the agreement for failure to escrow domain name whois information as required by section 3.6 of the Registrar Accreditation Agreement. Western United Domains, Inc., Mobiline USA d.b.a. DomainBonus.com, and DropNation.com were all given 15 working days to begin escrowing data or face termination.

Registrar Alantron BLTD was cited for failing to provide public access to whois information on its domain names. ICANN has notified Alantron twice within the past 30 days of the unavailability of its whois database.

Of the four registrars, only Alantron appears to have more than 1,000 domain names registered. According to RegistrarSt

Source: Phwinfo.com

Approximately 11 million new domain names were registered in the fourth quarter of 2009, an eight percent increase in new registrations from the third quarter of 2009. The increase has brought the total of registrations across all of the Top Level Domain Names to 192 million, an increase of nearly 15 million domain name registrations since the close of 2008. That means we’ll likely cross the 200 million milestone this or next quarter, provided growth continues.The numbers come from VeriSign’s latest Domain Name Industry Brief .In Q4 2009, the base of domain name registrations grew by two percent over the third quarter of 2009 and eight percent over the fourth quarter of 2008.According to the Industry Brief, the base of Country Code Top Level Domain Names (ccTLDs) rose to 78.6 million domain names, a three percent increase quarter over quarter and a 10 percent increase year over year. In terms of total registrations, .com unsurprisingly continues to have the highest base followed by .cn (China), .de (Germany) and .net.VeriSign’s average daily DNS query load during the fourth quarter of 2009 was 52 billion per day with peaks as high as 61 billion per day, jumping 48 percent for the daily average and 31 percent increase for peak daily queries as compared to fourth quarter 2008.

Source : TechCrunch.com
Author : Robin Wauters