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Internet
now single biggest source of global information
Thursday December 02, 2010 12:21:41 PM ,
Shudip Talukdar, IANS
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New Delhi:
What began modestly in the late 1960s as a way to connect research
establishments by the US military has grown phenomenally to become
the Internet, networking and empowering billions of people
worldwide in myriads of ways. For instance, the latest Wikileaks,
comprising million of documents, demonstrate the power of the
Internet to change the world and bring transparency in governance.
Today, the "Net" is the world's single biggest source of
information on every known and unknown subject and the world's
largest mail-order catalogue. More than a billion people were
using the Internet by 2005. The world is observing The Decade of
the International Internet (2000-2010).
Driving this spectacular growth has been the engine of dotcoms and
dotnets, the legions of domain names which populate the net,
becoming household words. Currently, the year's third quarter
closed with a base of nearly 202 million domain name
registrations, up by 3.8 million over the second quarter's figures
and 13.3 million or seven percent over the year.
The Domain Name System (DNS) divides the Internet into a series of
component networks called domains that enable e-mail and other
files to be sent across the entire Internet. Each and every site
in the Internet is linked with one of the domains.
Universities, for example, belong to the "edu" domain. Other
domains are gov (government), com (commercial organizations), mil
(military), net (network service providers), and org (nonprofit
organizations).
The combined base of dotcom and dotnet domain names has surpassed
103 million. New registrations totalled 7.5 million during this
year's third quarter, representing an increase of seven percent
from a year ago. The dotcom/dotnet renewal rate for the third
quarter was 72.8 percent, down from 73.2 percent for the second
quarter, according to the latest Domain Name Industry Brief,
published by VeriSign, Inc.
VeriSign's average daily DNS query load (number of queries) during
third quarter 2010 was 66 billion per day, with a peak of 78
billion. Compared to the same period in 2009, the daily query
average increased 23 percent and the peak grew by 27 percent.
The latest Domain Name Industry Brief also spotlights the
importance of International Domain Names (IDNs), as the growth of
the Internet spreads around the globe.
Today the English-speaking world makes up nearly 40 percent of
Internet users. Africa had less than five million Internet users a
decade ago; now, it has more than 100 million. In 2000, Asia was
level with Europe and North America for users; today it has more
than those two continents combined.
In the coming decade, the Internet will continue to become a
ubiquitous, multi-cultural tool, fueled in part by the adoption of
IDNs.
By enabling online content and businesses to be represented in
local scripts and languages, IDNs help the Internet to expand the
power of technology to regions and cultures, and connect the world
in new ways.
The IDN Software Developer's Consortium last met in Amman, Jordan,
on Oct 29,
and included representatives from Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Russian
Federation, Japan, China, Korea, Hong Kong and Australia. The next
consortium meeting will be in Cartagena, Colombia, during the
ICANN meeting.
VeriSign publishes the Domain Name Industry Brief to provide
Internet users throughout the world with significant statistical
and analytical research and data on the domain name industry and
the Internet as a whole.
(Shudip
Talukdar can be contacted at shudip.t@ians.in)
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