The 14th international conference for ccTLD registries and registrars in the CIS, Central and Eastern Europe, TLDCON 2021, opened on September 15. The event was organized by the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ and supported by UZINFOCOM, Technical Center of Internet and MSK-IX.
Opening the event, Andrey Vorobyev, the Director of the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ, noted that TLDCON has been recognized as the largest regional platform for discussing DNS development, and that its audience has doubled since the conference moved online, as 230 people from 27 countries registered to participate in TLDCON 2021.
First Deputy Minister for the Development of Information Technologies and Communications of the Republic of Uzbekistan Oleg Pekos noted that participation in TLDCON is a good opportunity to discuss the situation in internet governance both in the country and in the wider region.
“Managing the national domain zone while incorporating the best international practices has become one of the key goals of our industry today,” he said. Mr Pekos talked about progress with ccTLD .UZ. In particular, he said .UZ registrations have grown by 280 percent over the past four years, with almost 100,000 domain names registered in .UZ now.
UZINFOCOM Marketing Director Murad Ibragimov shared some details of how the Uzbek national registrar works. This year, .UZ marked its 25th anniversary, and a postage stamp was issued in honor of this event. Issuing postage stamps and other postage marks has become traditional in the domain industry. In 2019, Russian Post issued a stamp to mark the 25th anniversary of the .RU domain https://cctld.ru/media/news/kc/19613/.
This year, the Coordination Center turns 20, Andrey Vorobyev said, mentioning a number of events and projects dedicated to the anniversary, including the launch of the 20cctld.ru anniversary website and a series of video interviews with Runet veterans.
“At the end of 2021, this oral chronicle of Runet will also be available in print: we are preparing a special supplement to Internet Inside magazine containing transcripts of the most remarkable interviews with industry veterans,” Andrey Vorobyev said.
The Coordination Center also places great emphasis on projects aimed at improving the security and fault tolerance of the domain infrastructure including the launch of the Emergency Back-end Registry Operators (EBERO) system, escrow for ccTLD .RU and .РФ data, the Domain Patrol project and others.
Mikhail Anisimov, ICANN Head of Global Stakeholder Engagement for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, noted that ICANN places great importance on the CIS countries, Central and Eastern Europe and primarily on the development of infrastructure projects, as well as infrastructure security issues, development of technical documentation and research projects.
“National registries are centers of competence and active participants in our projects, and we look forward to further cooperation with them,” Anisimov added.
MSK-IX General Director Yelena Voronina explained what MSK-IX means for Runet today.
“Today the national DNS includes 23 points of presence; 13 of them are located in Russia, all of them using MSK-IX nodes. More than 500 Russian telecom operators receive data directly through the MSK-IX infrastructure,” Ms. Voronina added.
Director General of the Technical Center of Internet Alexei Rogdev added that the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed all companies in the industry to activate transformation processes.
“Protecting digital assets has become one of our top priorities. I know that we will face more digital challenges, but we will be ready for them,” Rogdev concluded.
The plenary session was also attended by representatives of ccTLD registries Ankhzaya Tseden, Datacom LLC (.MN, Mongolia) and Svetlana Tkachenko, Hostmaster UA (.UA, Ukraine), heads and experts from accredited Russian domain name registrars Igor Feoktistov, REG.RU, and Andrei Kuzmichyov, RU-CENTER, and head of the Uzbek domain name registrar SUVAN NET Artur Suvanov.
The conference is now underway. Join us online at tldcon.ru or watch us on the YouTube channel of the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ.
