The Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ has published the annual performance report by director Andrey Vorobyev on their website.
The report focuses on major events of the domain industry in both Russia and the rest of the world. It also lists the main achievements of the Coordination Center in 2016, such as the increase in the number domain names in .RU and .РФ, significant increase in the number of accredited registrars in .RU and .РФ domains, and higher number of competent organizations and participants of the Netoscope project.
By the end of 2016 the .RU domain had become one of the fastest growing national domains in the world, growing faster than any other large ccTLD, with the exception of the Chinese .CN. As at December 31, 2016, there were 5,424,919 registered domain names in the .RU domain. The annual increase in the .RU domain was 384,641 domain names in absolute terms and 7.6 percent in relative terms.
The .РФ domain maintained its position of the largest internationalized domain among other top level domains with 897,324 registered domain names by the end of 2016. The number of domain names in the .РФ domain zone increased by 32,984 names, or 3.8 percent, during the reporting period.
As of December 31, 2016, there were 45 registrars accredited in the .RU and .РФ domains with 11 new registrars accredited within the year, which became a record number in the history of Russian domain zones.
To improve the efficiency and quality of combating and preventing violations of the .RU and .РФ domains on the internet, the center added four more companies to the list of competent organizations, namely the Regional Public Center of Internet Technologies, Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media (Roskomnadzor), BIZon and the Central Bank of the Russian Federation. Their competence includes combating negative content in the web, combating and preventing violations on the internet, such as the use of .RU and .РФ domain names for phishing, hacking, spreading malware and hacking botnet systems, particularly in the spheres of financial markets and the national payment system of the Russian Federation. Roskomnadzor and BIZon also joined the information and analysis project Netoscope in order to cooperate on science and technology.
“The results of our work in 2016 show that we chose the right development strategy for the Russian domain space. We still prioritize supporting the further development of .RU/.РФ domain zones in accordance with international standards in the best interest of all internet users, and making the registration and support of domain names reliable. We still believe other aspects that concern the further development and security of the Russian domain space to be very important as well,” Vorobyev said.
