Durban is on the radar of the California-based global cyberspace authority, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers |(I-CANN).
It is set to become the first South African city to get its own top-level internet domain from I-CANN.
Durban is also set to host the authority’s first forum in the country. Dubbed the 47th I-CANN Public Meeting, the event takes place at Durban’s International Convention Centre between 14-18 July, following the Africa Domain Name System (DNS) Forum on July 12-13.
The events bring together experts and policy makers in the global internet domain industry.
I-CANN is a co-host of the Africa forum with tech foundation Internet Society and AfTLD.
The ZA Domain Name Authority (Zadna), custodians of “dot-co-dot-za”, announced last week that their application for a top-level domain (TLD) for Durban had passed the initial evaluation phase.
“I-CANN could approve the ‘dot-durban’ domain by September this year. This means that Durban websites could have the suffix ‘dot-durban’ instead of ‘dot-co-dot-za’… This makes it likely that we will see URLs ending with ‘dot-durban’ (.durban) such as ‘tourism.durban’ and ‘police.durban’ by year end,” said the authority’s chairman, Hasmukh Gajjar.
Dubbed the “dotDurban TLD project,” the process of applying for a TLD for Durban began early last year. At the same time, and in the same vein, the “dotCapeTown TLD” and “dotJoburg TLD” projects were also launched. The initiative is being lead by the authority, the ZA Central Registry and the Department of Communications.
“We applied for the three cities because we saw a firm trend where leading international cities were planning to secure their exclusive internet namespaces… Durban’s application was ranked ahead of Cape Town’s and Joburg’s as a result of |I-CANN’s decision to use a lottery system to prioritise applications received,” said Gajjar.
The initial evaluation phase involved determining whether or not the technical and financial resources required to operate a TLD were available.
Durban’s success boded well for Cape Town and Joburg, Gajjar said.
The eThekwini Municipality would receive priority when registering websites with the “dot-durban’ domain, said Gajjar, and government would also be able to reserve names of national heritage.
Arthur Goldstuck, managing director of technology research firm World Wide Worx, said a ‘dot-durban’ domain name would address the shortage of feasible website names still available in the dot-com and dot-co-dot-za domain hierarchies.
“The dot-durban domain name would provide branding power… By having dot-durban at the end of an internet website name, instead of dot-co-dot-za, you immediately add a layer of information about the entity owning the web site,” he said.
Meanwhile, last year Zadna quietly secured the I-CANN 47 meeting to be hosted in Durban next month. I-CANN holds three public meetings each year in different regions of the globe. One meeting was already held this year in Beijing.
According to the I-CANN website, the event comprises more than 200 different sessions where industry representatives and other stakeholder groups discuss issues related to the web authority’s policy.
The Africa Forum aims to establish a platform for the DNS community across the continent and to advance the domain name industry and domain name registrations in Africa.
“Despite support, the growth and sustainability of African country code TLDs and adoption of new technologies remains very low, as compared with other regions of the world. To identify the bottlenecks that are keeping the industry from growing and the actions that can catalyse its growth, the Internet Society, AfTLD, and I-CANN determined the need for a forum to discuss these regional DNS issues. The DNS Forum will foster cross-border collaboration between registries, registrars, registrants, DNS experts, government representatives and policy makers,” Internet Society said this month.