History of the Domain Industry

The history of the domain industry takes one through a series of interesting developments. The complex domain name industry is at present managed by ICANN or the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.

Earlier, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) was created by the US defense department in 1972. It assigned addresses to each computer linked to the network. All the networked computers could be identified using this IP address by the end of 1973. The world's first nameserver was developed in 1984 and the domain name system (DNS) came to be enforced in the year 1985 with the introduction of the generic top level domains such as.org, .com, and .net.

The architecture of the domain name system was designed which helped to spread the DNS information widely across the network. In 1991 the National science Foundation was given the responsibility of management and maintenance of the Internet. Later this responsibility was assigned to Network Solutions.

In earlier days, the registration of domain names was free of cost, but in 1992 registration and maintenance fee was introduced with the formation of a new organization called InterNIC (Internet's Network Information Centre). This organization governed the domain name system services and its registry. The ICANN was later formed in 1998 and all the responsibilities regarding IP address allocation, management of root servers and the assignment of protocol parameters were transferred to it. Its primary interest is to encourage competition in domain industry. It has also implemented the shared registration system where all the accredited companies of ICANN have been given the responsibility to add the domain to the global domain name database.

About 19 million domain names have been registered to date, with thousands of others registering more and more everyday. The domain industry is flourishing at a rate of 30% every year. The phenomenal growth of the domain industry is clear proof of the benefits of transferring domain registration from the control of government to private sector.

The history of domain industry helps you to analyze how the domain industry flourished and established itself as a remarkable milestone in the web world over the past 50 years.