On April 7, 2019, the national Russian top-level domain .RU marked its anniversary: 25 years ago, the Russian domain was included in the IANA database. .RU is currently one of the most popular national domains in the world. It ranks fifth among global ccTLDs and ninth among all top-level domains in terms of the number of second-level domain names: there are 5 million of them.
Every day, some 4,000 domain names are registered in .RU; 91.9 percent (4.6 million) of domain names are actively used, which is a big number for top-level domains. Twenty-nine percent of domain names in .RU are over five years of age, and 29.4 percent were registered less than a year ago. Seventy-seven percent of domain names in .RU belong to individuals.
The number of domain name administrators has grown by over 22,000 since last year; in all, there are 2.1 million administrators in .RU. Seventy-five percent of administrators own one domain, and this number is constantly growing. The number of administrators that operate 10 or more domain names has fallen by 3,300 since 2018 and stands at 41,700, or less than 2 percent.
The .RU domain is highly popular among Russians: almost 83 percent of domain names are registered by Russian citizens. Slightly less than 1 percent of domain names in .RU are registered in Ukraine and 0.5 percent in Belarus. As for regional distribution, Moscow and the Moscow Region have the largest number of domain names: 31.5 percent. Next come St. Petersburg with 7.2 percent, the Krasnodar Territory and the Sverdlovsk Region with 2.3 percent in each, and the Chelyabinsk Region with 1.8 percent.
“Twenty-five years is a serious milestone for the national domain .RU. For all these years, the domain has developed alongside of new technology, and the open registration of domain names had a positive impact on the development of the Russian segment of the net. The Russian domain space has become a place that reflects all events in the life of the country and its citizens, both global and small events related to one family or even one person. The chronicles of the country can be seen in these 25 years. As for today, the domain is a touchstone of the development of Russia’s digital economy. The Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ congratulates everyone involved in this major event and invites Runet users to share in the occasion,” said Director of the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ Andrey Vorobyev.
.RU has already received congratulations from national domain registries of foreign countries, Russian and international professional and public organizations, internet gurus and experts dealing with internet development and new technology.
The Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ has prepared a series of special events, with the first one being the Russian Internet Governance Forum https://rigf.ru/ RIGF 2019, which opened on April 8, 2019, in Moscow. A commemorative postage stamp was issued, and a ceremony to cancel the stamp took place at RIGF 2019. The Coordination Center has also launched the 25.cctld.ru special project https://25.cctld.ru/index.php. , which is a collection of interesting facts about the life of .RU, as well as videos and messages of congratulations from Russian and foreign experts and organizations, plus historical documents and the top news about the events held to mark the anniversary.
