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Archive of "New TLDs" Category
Why choose HEXONET?
Why Choose HEXONET Over Your Competitors? What Makes HEXONET Different?
With every phone call, meeting, or industry gathering, seemingly we at HEXONET always get asked the same questions – Why HEXONET? What makes HEXONET different from your competitors? Why should I want to partner with HEXONET? The answer is clear, HEXONET has the right people, the proven expertise, and best technology.The Team @ HEXONET
At HEXONET, our team is immeasurably greater than the sum of our individual parts. This can only happen when a team has a common vision and the passion to pursue it. HEXONET’s employees strive everyday to empower resellers through world-class engineering and innovation, whether that’s going above and beyond to answer a support call or simply investing countless of hours testing to ensure our latest builds are rock solid. This is who we are and how we work everyday.Our passion is fueled by the commendations from our customers. Emails, phone calls, and meetings where our customers not only give us praise, but also give us positive criticism provide guidance as to what we can do better and how we can innovate even more. At HEXONET we welcome our clients and partners to share in our philosophy and work with us towards making things better. This is how we grow.
And above all things, our team holds true to doing business the old fashion way – that promises are kept and our word is our honor. At HEXONET, we would rather close our doors than lose the trust of our clients and partners.
Expertise of the Team @ HEXONET
There are HEXONET competitors who are way better at marketing than us, no doubt. Also, there are some of competitors who also have top notch engineering like us. And there are some who have been in business longer than us. So how are we different? At HEXONET we believe we have the right balance of skill and experience, that when combined properly, is vastly more superior than any one skill our competitors possess.HEXONET’s foundation is world-class engineering, which is lead by some of the industry’s foremost technical talent. Though technology serves as the foundation for the company, it is our business leaders who make what we do special. Worldwide, there are only a handful of individuals who have both the high-level strategic acumen and the practical and practiced exposure in our industry to actually make things work correctly.
Altogether, HEXONET has more than thirty (30) years of experience in the domain and hosting industry, as executives, programmers and operational managers. We know the top-down strategy and most importantly the bottom-up mechanics for success.
The Technology – HEXONET eats, drinks and breathes Technology!
HEXONET technology is a reflection of a single philosophy heralded by its founder and CEO, Jens Wagner – automation is the key to success, and making automation faster and more stable only brings success that much sooner. So how does HEXONET technology bring success faster to our customers?The foundation of HEXONET technology is an ultra-fast, highly reliable, and scalable domain registration system that provides anyone who uses it the widest selection of domains from a single source (see the list). Simply connect with the platform once and everything else is entirely automated. Even if technology changes, new registries arise, old registries die, or new regulations becomes mandatory, HEXONET does all the hard work of automation for our customers!
Add to this amazing platform an abundance of ways to connect, whether it be via API, web control panel, EPP 1.0, or our newest way, Registrar Operations Center (RegistrarOC), moving from a decision to registering the first domain with us can literally be minutes.
Whether preparing for the impeding new gTLDs or looking for ways to save money without sacrificing performance, HEXONET technology even makes the decision to try totally risk-free. Risk-free because anyone can start off as a reseller (no signup fees or commitments) and seamlessly switch to their own accreditation utilizing RegistrarOC when the volume makes sense. In fact, switching requires no engineering, no effort to migrate domains onto one’s accreditation (fully automated and free of charge), and once done, saves customers even more money since afterward, domain registration and management only costs a small administrative fee per domain.
Talk with us, work with us, and see how our technology is easier to use, more reliable, and more cost effective!
ICANN Regional Meeting and More Questions on nTLDs
ICANN Regional Meeting – Toronto, Canada
Thanks to ICANN for hosting the North America Regional meeting at the Sheraton in downtown Toronto, Canada. This event was done first class and was in my opinion a highly successful meeting. A special thanks goes out to Afilias for sponsoring the “Blue Jays” vs. “Red-Sox” baseball game at Rogers Centre, it was a blast.
At this regional ICANN meeting many interesting topics were covered. Some topics though not at the foremost of my mind, surprisingly were not only highly interesting but very informative. The topics were:
- ICANN Policy
- Terminated Registrar Transition Process
- new gTLDs
- Contractual Compliance
- Registry/Registrar Dialogue
- Update on the Registrar Constituency
- Security Issues
- National Cyber Forensic Training Alliance (NCFTA) & FBI
Among all the topics, the new TLD process continues to dominate mind share as expected. Specifically for nTLDs, my take away from the meeting in Toronto, was that the next draft guidebook for applicants should be ready prior to the ICANN meeting in Seoul in late October. So it looks like full steam ahead for nTLDs!
With so many TLDs (estimate 100 – 200 plus) presumably in queue for filing (.food, .wine, .blog, .movie, .eco … ), I would really like to get some insight on how these new TLDs will be introduced. Moreover, if applications are to be approved in batches, in what order will these approved TLDs be released and in what groupings. Questions that come to mind are:
a. Will there be a specific order in which new TLDs are launched?
b. If yes, what is the criteria in determining launch order? Will the criteria be open and reviewable?
c. If there is no order and it becomes “Launch whenever ready”, what potential confusion could there be to the market if too many nTLDs are released in the same month? How will the market be able to compensate this?
d. Other open questions? YES!
A License to Print Money
One big lesson everyone is learning now from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, is that free money is not free. The loosening of restrictions in the housing market (anyone could get a house or borrow against their home) let the unqualified to buy and borrow, which in the end (when they couldn’t pay their debts) started the collapse of the house market. In some ways, there are parallels in the way we are treating nTLDs.
Not to say the applicants for nTLDs are not qualified, but more importantly, to point out the fact that running a successful registry today is increasingly more difficult. The days of simply opening a registry and seeing millions of registrations are long gone. Yes the days of “printing money” in my opinion are over, unless you have a unique concept.
I believe our industry is projecting the idea that running a registry is easy – No experience necessary, work only a little, make big money! Without giving applicants a dose of the operational reality of running a successful registry, we are only increasing the chances of having more of them fail. When enough nTLDs fail, just like the housing bubble burst, everyone will get hurt.
Unifying ccTLDs
The Good, Bad and the Ugly
Being an active and vocal participant in the Domain industry for the better part of a decade has allowed me to see both the good and bad in our business. Of the good things, in fact very good, has been country-code top level domains (ccTLDs). Country-code TLDs are simple to understand, easily associated with, and even evoke a sense of ownership (patriotism), which is the perfect formula for a successful TLD.
Though ccTLDs have been good for our industry, the single glaring problem with them has been the lack of standards across the ccTLD registries. Understanding issues of culture, nationalism, and some registries just wanting to be different, this doesn’t take away the fact that with a standard (EPP) there would invariably be more registrars offering a wider selection of ccTLDs. And with greater availability, access and distribution of ccTLDs, it’s not hard to imagine ccTLDs numbers looking completely different than they do today. Until the ccTLD registries can be unified, registrars will have neither the time nor money to consider but a handful of ccTLDs at a time.
Climbing the Mountain
Even without a standard, HEXONET has taken on the arduous task of bringing all the world’s ccTLD registries under one roof. Today, HEXONET’s ccTLD EPP platform allows resellers and registrars alike to access over 150 ccTLDs from one source. Yes over 150 via EPP! And the list continues to grow.
To provide this service, HEXONET has for many few years been obtaining a vast array of accreditations, investing substantial capital into registry accounts, building up critical operational and engineering expertise about each and every registry, and last but not least, poured thousands of engineering hours into developing an EPP connection for each registry, even if the registry doesn’t support EPP! The end result, allows anyone to quickly and profitably offer hundreds of ccTLDs without any engineering or financial risk. HEXONET has made it utterly simple.
Why Climb the Mountain
Though the goal of unifying the ccTLDs under one protocol and one supplier was ambitious, the need for such a service was clear. The global scope of business today require companies protect their brands across the world. Businesses don’t have the time to peck and hunt through multiple registrars to get the ccTLDs they need. Even registrars need such a service, since they don’t have the time, money or expertise to embark on such an endeavor, they would rather spend their energies on making money.
HEXONET from its genesis has been an engineering centric company. Without this critical characteristic, I doubt the ccTLD EPP platform would have even been attempted. HEXONET engineers like to work on big problems, so tackling the ccTLD unification issue was right in the company’s sweet spot! Ever hear the phrase, “bitting off more than you can chew”? At times, this project felt exactly like that old adage. Imagine researching, planning, developing, testing, and testing again against every operation and command across virtually every non-EPP registry. Even for registries who were EPP complaint, because of home spun EPP extensions, HEXONET had to provide a mapping of those extensions into standard EPP. The end result is HEXONET’s EPP 1.0 Gateway for ccTLDs, which is fully compliant to EPP 1.0 (RFC 4930-4933), the first of its kind industry wide.
Win-Win for Everyone
As I stated at the top of this post, among the best things in our industry for me has been ccTLDs, except for the unification issue. A big reason for coming to HEXONET and joining forces once again with Jens Wagner was to do something special, which not only helps HEXONET, but ultimately helps our industry. I believe our ccTLD EPP 1.0 platform really accomplishes both goals.
HEXONET is even allowing connectivity to the EPP platform without charge. Wholesale domain registration rates are extremely competitive and are only paid at the time of registration. Even large registrars with their own accreditations have free use of the the EPP connections via HEXONET’s Registrar Operations Center, which is the company’s high performance and highly available turnkey registrar platform. Migrating is also a breeze since the EPP connection is the same, whether one is connecting to HEXONET’s accreditation or their own, clients who have enough volume to be accredited for a particular ccTLD can seamlessly upgrade with the ease of flipping a switch. No engineering, no time, not even missing a transaction.
The win-win story of ccTLDs is only possible because someone went ahead and built/implemented a standard, in this case the EPP standard. In a future series of Blog Posts I will attempt to introduce some ccTLDs registries. Please stay tuned …
more nTLDs – new Top-Level-Domains
The frenzy that is nTLDs (new Top-Level-Domains) is only getting more frenetic! Since I wrote my blog post “new TLDs ermerging” on May 26th, 2009, the world of nTLDs has changed dramatically, especially in light of the recent ICANN meeting in Sydney, which I am sure stirred the pot some more.
Though I unfortunately couldn’t attend the meeting in Sydney, I was lucky enough to get my fair share of news remotely. The only aspect of attending via the web that I regretted, was not being able to meet the new CEO of ICANN Rod Beckstrom in person. Other than this one regret, I was able to get a steady stream of news and insights from the deluge of tweets!
As I expected, the list of official and unofficial nTLDs continues to grow unabated:
- .BASKETBALL
- .BAY
- .BAYERN
- .CAR
- .DELOITTE
- .ECO
- .FAM
- .FOOD
- .GEO
- .GREEN
- .HEALTH
- .HOTEL
- .HOLMES
- .MED
- .MUSIC
- .MONEY
- .NYC
- .PARIS
- .PHONE
- .QUEBEC
- .RADIO
- .REAL
- .ROMA
- .SPORT
- .SURF
- .TOKYO
- .VIDEO
… and … and …. ?This list begs the question, which ones are even going to be around in 5 years? I ask this question because I just don’t see the value proposition in many of them. I thought nTLDs, should:
a.) provide guidance and direction to the Users and help them better navigate to where they actually want to go on the internet as well as
b.) drive innovation on the Internet.
Where’s the value in cluttering the Internet highway? This is analogous to having more signs along a road, at some point you have diminishing returns and the extra signs only start confusing rather than helping. I really don’t think the average user out there will grasp or even find the value in many of these nTLDs. As for innovation, I can see this happening, but at what cost benefit? If the end user value is small by adding a huge amount of administrative and technical overhead, then what is the point.
Another interesting angle on the proliferation of these nTLD applications is the dynamic between competing applicants for nTLDs that are essentially the same. For instance, .eco has two totally different groups vying for the same TLD:
Applicant A:
- www.supportdoteco.com
- Partnered with Al Gore
- Partnered with Alliance for Climate Protection
- Extensive experience and working relationships with many Internet based companies
- Extensive experience with working relations in the movie industry
- Registry Services to be provided in partnership with Minds and Machines. Read Press Release.
Applicant B:
- www.doteco.info
- Founders of Big Room
- Extensive experience on sustainability policy having worked at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)
- Are industry insiders formerly from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
- Highly experienced (Institute for Sustainable Futures, the EcoDesign Foundation,the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD))
- Registry Services to be provided in partnership with Afilias. Read Press Release
It is going to be interesting to see who wins this winner-by-knock-out prize fight. I am sure we are going to see other battles over the same nTLD in the near future.
Though I am personally watching everything from the sidelines, I do want to offer one piece of advise to the nTLD applicants – have a compelling business model behind your nTLD. If the business model is not significantly different than existing TLDs, you are likely going to see the same fate as those TLDs before you, who today are in limbo.
With the maturation of the industry technologies, launching a TLD is the easy part. The difficulty of running a successful TLD comes after one opens the doors. Finding a captive audience and ensuring high registrations/renewals has eluded many recent TLDs operators.
Very interesting times my friends. Lets see what happens in the weeks, months ahead of us.
new TLDs emerging
With all the buzz surrounding new TLDs (nTLDs) at the last ICANN meeting in Mexico, I am sure many of you have already encountered or read information regarding the latest applications. For those who haven’t been staying abreast of the latest, here is a quick review:
There are two different general types of TLDs – gTLDs and ccTLDs. ICANN is now opening the possibility of adding further TLD extensions, which can virtually be anything.
gTLDS: (generic Top Level Domains)
.asia – “From ASIA – for ASIA”. Introduced in 2007.
.biz – For businesses. Introduced in 2001.
.com – For everyone, though intended for commercial registrants. Introduced in 1985.
.info – For everyone and as a general purpose TLD. Introduced in 2001.
.mobi – For Mobile content on phones and PDAs. Introduced in 2005.
.name – For individuals and personal information. Introduced in 2001.
.net – For everyone, though intended for network providers. Introduced in 1985.
.org – For everyone, though intended for organizations and not-for-profits. Introduced in 1985
more…ccTLDs: (country code Top Level Domains)
Two-letter TLDs designated for a particular country or autonomous territory to facilitate communication and service within that country or territory..DE – Deutschland (Germany, managed by DENIC e.G.)
.UK – United Kingdom (managed by Nominet)
.BE – Belgium (managed by DNS .BE)
.CN – China (managed by CNNIC)
.CA – Canada (managed by CIRA)
.US – United States of America (managed by NeuStar)
The entire list can be viewed under IANA.nTLDs: (new Top Level Domains)
ICANN is opening up the TLD namespace with virtually anything under the sun. Basically anything to the right of the “dot” goes and right now there are many vying for control of these new extensions. Though the following list is not complete or 100% accurate, many applicants have already identified themselves:- .RADIO
- .ECO (Ecological)
- .GREEN (Ecological)
- .MOVIE (Movie/Film Industry)
- .FAM (Family)
- .MUSIC (Music)
- .HEALTH (dot health)
- .SPORT (dot Sport)
- .INDIGI (for indigenous peoples)
- .NYC (New York City)
- .BERLIN (Berlin Germany)
- .PARIS (Paris France)
- .BZH (Brittany, a region in France)
- .ENG (England, a kingdom in the U.K.)
- .GAL (Galicia, a region in Spain)
- .MED (Mediterranean)
- .LLI (Leonese Language and Leonese Culture)
- .GAY
- .WEB
- .POST
- .MAIL (for emails and to control spam)
- .GEO (generic geographical locations)
- .XXX (Adult Entertainment)
- .BCN (Barcelona)
- .LAT (Latin America)
As we can all see, the list continues to grow wildly. I am sure I am missing many potential applications. Additionally, there are clearly some nTLDs applications essentially competing for the same theme or market. On top of this, there may also be multiple applicants for the same TLD, meaning we may see X number of organizations apply for .mail or .xxx.
A major risk for these nTLD applications is whether they have a viable business model to support their nTLD in the long run. Last year I wrote the article, “Is the Market Ready for new TLDs”, which covers the pros and cons of these nTLDs from a registrar perspective. In a nutshell, of all these nTLDs who is actually going to be operational and profitable in 3 to 5 years. And if one or many of these nTLDs fold, what are the consequences? My fear is that many nTLDs will disappear agan within the next 5 years or will change hands multiple times.
Landscape has changed at ICANN Meetings
After returning from the ICANN Meeting in Mexico, I must admit that I am walking away from the conference with mixed emotions. As many of you know, I’ve been going to ICANN conferences for years now, this last one being my 19th (wow, time definitely flies by), to mainly touch base with people I know, to connect with new key players, and also to strike up conversations about sales and business development.
This time around it felt strange. On the one hand, it was fantastic to be representing HEXONET Services Inc. and having some excellent meetings there (and returning with a lot of work as luggage), but on the other hand, I was disappointed with the atmosphere and tone of this ICANN conference in comparison with past meetings. This ICANN meeting was a strange mix of excitement (over the nTLDs – new Top-Level-Domains), skepticism (concerning the actual start of the application process), anxiety (of what will happen next) and whole lot of secrecy.
This ICANN Meeting in Mexico was also very sales and marketing oriented. Spread over two different floors, there were definitely more companies attending with actual booths promoting their products than ever before. I also had the sense that everyone was offering registry based or nTLD consulting services.
The fact that our industry is now on the verge of having nTLDs, I got the sense people were fishing for information on what to do next. The frenzy of questions really centered around the influx of new faces investigating or wanting to submit an application for a nTLD, as well as, individuals/organizations who were looking to service such applicants with consulting.
This consulting part really interested me, as I am sure many organizations would welcome some guidance through the process of submitting a nTLD. Most importantly, many such applicants will likely need heavy support for developing and building the operational infrastructure of their respective TLD. The question is who makes a good consultant in our industry, especially for applicants to the nTLD process? The right consultant to me has solid experienced based answers to the following questions:
a.) Does your consultant have a solid background in terms of policy development in the Internet industry?
b.) Does your consultant have solid contacts in this industry? Does he have a good reputation?
c.) Does your consultant possibly have a solid background in actually running a registrar? Does your consultant understand the various different business models of a registrar, respectively the two major ones retail vs. reseller?
d.) Has your consultant ever been involved in a registry before?
e.) Does your consultant have strong relationships with the many ICANN Accredited registrars?
My advise to new nTLD applicants is to start right and start best. The first step will set the path of success or failure. You would definitely want someone who has a proven history of success and an extensive network of contacts in this very unique industry. Also, keep in mind, that the major pillar of any registry is the “registrar-pillar”, as they will be your main revenue stream, as well as, your gateway to the end-user.
Registrar feedback is critical, as it is based on “real-life” and day to day experiences that provide insight on how your product is perceived by the general public. Registries should not be picky and should be interested in serving any and all registrars, meaning sign-up as many registrars as possible, even though your top 20 registrars will likely generate 80% of your revenue. Nonetheless, based on my experience, widening your revenue channel and lowering your risk by having a vast diversity of clients (small registrars to the large ones) has shown to be the best way to success for registries.
Beyond signing up registrars, which should be easy to do (assuming the RRA – Registry-Registrar-Agreement is fairly straight forward), the key to success is getting registrars operational and supported with your registry as quickly as possible. The sooner they are ready the sooner sales start happening. My point here is to choose your registry back-end provider wisely. The easier it is for a registrar to integrate, the quicker you as a registry will see your customers going operational.
Is the market ready for new gTLDs?
A recent and controversial topic among industry insiders is ICANN’s announcement that they will be opening up the market for new gTLDs (ICANN). On both sides of the coin there are pros and cons. The following is my unbiased view on this important issue:
Having managed and headed various large registrars over the past eight years, my answer to this question is an emphatic some “yes” and many “no”. I come to this conclusion based on two fundamental principles: First, I do not believe registrars have the will nor money to implement a flood of new TLDs. Second, the common buyer of domain names is already in a state of confusion with the handful of TLDs that exist today; therefore, it makes no sense to think that greater confusion will lead to greater market acceptance.
Principle 1: Registrar Business and Operational Fundamentals
From a pure business standpoint, the idea of more TLDs is a no-brainer. More TLDs = more products = more revenue = more profit. That is, assuming that registrars can quickly and cost-effectively integrate, automate, and fund TLD expansion. Hmmmm…can we really assume registrars can integrate, automate, and fund TLD expansion quickly and cost-effectively?How about, more products = more development = more support = much more costs. My experience points to the fact that registrars require a lot of resources and time to implement and support new TLDs. So what would happen if thirty new TLDs were launched in one year? I am convinced that not too many registrars will be able to keep up the pace. As a result, registrars will end up picking and choosing some to implement and forgo many, depending on which TLDs they believe can produce the highest return on investment. From a business operations perspective, not more than a handful of TLDs releases, in any given year, is feasible.
Principle 2: Domain Buyer Knowledge, Sophistication, and Desire
After hearing, “we have only scratched the surface of the Internet”, repeatedly at conference after conference, I am convinced that the statement is true. If we take this phrase apart a little further, what does it mean? The masses are still just beginning to understand the Internet and its uses. Outside of domain industry circles, how often do you come across people who still don’t know what a domain is or what it is used for? Even the basics that we take for granted like SMTP, IMAP, POP, HTML, and DNS are often a foreign language to most. The idea here is that as users slowly understand and educate themselves, they will in turn participate further in this wonderful thing called the Internet. They may even, possibly, buy a domain name! The key word here is “slowly”!To further support my point on the word “slowly”, or, to make it simple, take a look at some interesting moves in the hosting industry: Many are going back to basics, offering very simple products that allow users to create websites in three simple steps. Blogging for example has exploded because creating and maintaining a blog is relatively easy. What is the lesson here? The mass market wants simple and they move much slower than how we want them to move.
With the number of possible new TLDs being tossed around in the 20 – 400 range, can the average Internet user really understand and desire such a roll out of new TLDs? Introducing too many TLDs at once or in a short time frame will only confuse the market. Moreover, given the state of the economy, users with set budgets will be picky and are likely to spend their hard-earned dollars on the handful of domains they think will provide the best ROI. I personally prefer and believe a gradual introduction of new TLDs to the market provides the needed time to educate users, thus allowing for a strong end-user desire to hatch.
Survey
To investigate my points further, I would be extremely interested in doing a general survey of target users. Honestly, I think many in our industry (especially ICANN) would be intrigued to hear the answers to these simple set of questions:a. What is a Top-Level-Domain and which ones do you know?
b. Did you know that other gTLDs exist besides com, net, org, biz, info, name, asia, mobi, and pro? If yes, name a few?
c. Have you heard any mention of the following TLD extensions before?
.aero – [Yes] [No]
.museum – [Yes] [No]
.coop – [Yes] [No]
.travel – [Yes] [No]
.jobs – [Yes] [No]d. Do you know if these TLDs exist? (i.e., TLDs that are not yet applied)
.family – [Yes] [No]
.usa – [Yes] [No]
.blog – [Yes] [No]
.shop – [Yes] [No]Stay tuned for more information to follow.
