The 10th International Conference for ccTLD Registries and Registrars of CIS, Central and Eastern Europe (TLDCON 2017) started in Almaty on September 6. Almost 140 people from 17 countries registered to participate in the event.
The TLDCON 2017 opened with a speech by Andrei Vorobyev, Director of the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ. “We are holding our 10th anniversary conference in Almaty to show that the Eurasian space has its own agenda of internet governance, and that Kazakhstan is one of its biggest contributors. For the past 10 years of the TLDCON’s work, the role of government in internet governance has increased significantly in all countries, and it’s a global trend,” he said.
Vorobyev also noted that the Russian national domains .RU and .РФ are among leaders on the European market for both the number of domain names (almost 5.5 million in .RU and 900,000 in .РФ) and the rates of growth. Moreover, 2016 saw an unprecedented increase in the number of new registrars. Today there are 45 registrars; 11 of these registrars got accredited last year. There are new major hosting companies and studios on the market that are now providing services to their clients on their own. Andrei Vorobyev also spoke about the changes in domain name prices for registrars in the .RU and .РФ domains. “Starting July 1, there was an almost 70% (120 rubles) increase in domain name prices, and the reactions of our registrars were mixed. But now I can tell you now that the price rise did not cause an alleged collapse of the domain zone, which did not happen, but rehabilitated the Russian domain name market. Since domain investors can no longer pay for their huge portfolios of domain names, many of the sought-after domain names are back on the market,” Vorobyev said.
Zharkynbek Azamatov, Zerde Holding Deputy Board Chairman, said that the internet is one of the most dynamically developing industries in Kazakhstan. He also said that a new program called Digital Kazakhstan will soon be adopted in the country. “One of the main goals of this program is providing the rural areas in Kazakhstan with a broadband connection. This will give a strong impetus to the whole industry. The Digital Kazakhstan program will increase the share of the internet industry to 5-6 percent of the GDP,” he said.
Nurlan Isin, President of the Kazakhstan Association of IT companies administrating the national domains .KZ and .КАЗ, cited figures showing the spread of the internet in Kazakhstan. In 2016, the rate of internet users in the country was 76.8 percent, and the broadband penetration rate grew twofold, to 76.2 percent that year. Kazakhstan is currently ranked 33rd in the UN development index of electronic government. There are 133,000 domain names registered in the .KZ domain zone, which saw 3.5 percent growth in 2016. “Kazakhstan hasn’t been paying enough attention to the issues of internet governance and protecting the national segment of the internet, but now we have major changes on the way, including those taking place under the Digital Kazakhstan program,” Isin said.
Alexandra Kulikova, ICANN’s Global Stakeholder Engagement Manager for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, spoke about ICANN’s work in providing domain space security. “Solving security issues is crucial for many countries. It’s important to mention that ICANN believes that the .KZ domain zone has recently been very stable in terms of operation and security management. ICANN would be happy to see the Kazakhstan community actively participate in the organization’s work and share its experience,” Kulikova said. She also encouraged the whole registrar community of CIS and Eastern European countries to get involved in the work of ICANN and other international organizations, and to start sharing their experience and knowledge more often.
Alexei Platonov, General Director of the Technical Center of Internet, noted that the center’s goal is the stable operation of the .RU and .РФ domains and other Russian domains, such as .SU, .ДЕТИ, and .ТАТАR, and that the Netoscope project plays a significant role in this process. “There were many security issues in the .RU domain zone before 2012, when the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ and the Technical Center of Internet started this project. The aim of the Netoscope project was to create an information system for collecting and analyzing information on potentially malicious domains in order to identify and combat them using various types of mechanisms. Today the Netoscope project brings together many different expert organizations that find this system very convenient and cost-effective,” Platonov said.
Elena Voronina, CEO at MSK-IX, introduced a new backup registry of national domains which was developed by MSK-IX and launched on September 1. The backup register will mitigate the negative effects of possible destabilization of domain zones and security risks in case of critical errors in the main .RU/.РФ domain zone register. In case of an emergency, the new back-up register will allow users to save a copy of the .RU/.РФ zone file. “This back-up register was developed by our company together with the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ. It makes our DNS system more resilient to various kinds of critical situations. It’s not our only project related to the domain business. Our DNS system consists of 32 nodes from all around the world. We collect data from every node in our system, analyze it and then determine where the next node should be located. The current trend is that 50 percent of requests come from Russia, while the other 50 percent of requests come from different countries, most of them from former-Soviet countries. Together with the Coordination Center we analyze the requests, find the areas with the most requests and locate our DNS nodes there. Recently, for example, we have located a new DNS node in Kazakhstan,” Voronina said.
TLDCON 2017 continues; keep watching our live stream online!
