Skip to main content

VeriSign: Internet has almost 210 million domains

Verisign Top-Level Domain Registrations
Image used with permission by copyright holder

The Internet may have run out of IPv4 address space earlier this year, but that doesn’t seem to have put any damper on the worldwide market for Internet domains. According to a new Domain Name Industry Brief from VeriSign (PDF) at the end of the first quarter of 2011 the total number of top-level domains registered around the world was over 209.8 million, an increase of 4.5 million (or 2.2 percent) over the fourth quarter alone. Overall, domain registrations grew by 7.9 percent (15.3 million) during the last year.

For the year, the ten largest top-level domains in order were .com, .de, .net, .uk, .org, .info, .nl, .eu, .cn, and .ru. Although there are more than 240 top-level domains in use around the world, some 61 percent of all registrations in the last year were in those top ten domains.

Although registrations in top-level domains representing individual countries—like .jp, .uk, .ca, and .us—saw a 5.1 percent increase during the year, the venerable .com and .net continue to be popular, with a combined total of 108 million domains registered in those two TLDs alone, and some 8.3 million new registrations during the fourth quarter. Those domains also have high renewal rates, with 73.8 percent of domains in those TLDs getting renewed.

That doesn’t mean some country codes aren’t seeing significant upticks in their usage, though: .uk has managed to bump .org from fourth to fifth place, while .nl and .eu each moved up a place while China’s .cn actually dropped. However, the country TLDs with the largest proportional growth were actually Australia’s .au and Canada’s .ca.

Geoff Duncan
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…
Quick — This 32-inch 4K monitor just had its price slashed by 21%
The 27-inch Dell S2721QS 4K monitor on a table.

Dell often has some great monitor deals and the firm has certainly excelled itself with an offer on the Dell 32-inch SE3223Q 4K monitor. Usually priced at $380, it's down to $300 for a limited time only. A fantastic price for a 4K monitor, you might already know to hit the buy button below but if you need some more guidance, keep reading while we explain what it offers.

Why you should buy the Dell 32-inch SE3223Q 4K monitor
Dell makes some of the best 4K monitors around with the Dell 32-inch SE3223Q 4K monitor reflecting many of those qualities. It offers 99% sRGB on its VA panel with 1.07 billion colors overall. There's also the aforementioned 4K resolution of 3840 x 2160 wide viewing angles and an anti-glare surface. It also has a response time of as little as 4ms gray-to-gray extreme and AMD FreeSync support. While the response rate isn't perfect for a gaming setup, it's fine for some light gaming with AMD FreeSync ensuring you get smooth browsing while you work.

Read more
Everything Microsoft didn’t announce at its 2023 Surface event
Microsoft showing off the new Surface laptop Go 3 at its September event.

Microsoft unveiled several new products during its 2023 Surface event. We got lots of updates about Windows Copilot and other AI-driven software upgrades, as well as plenty of hardware, including the Surface Laptop Studio 2 and the Surface Laptop Go 3.

While a lot of our early predictions came true during the Microsoft September event, there are still a few things that were noticeably missing from this year's lineup. Here's what Microsoft could have announced, but didn't.
Surface Pro 10

Read more
Lenovo Legion Pro 5 gaming laptop with an RTX 4070 is $400 off
Cyberpunk 2077 on the Lenovo Legion Pro 5.

If you're planning to buy a new gaming laptop, we highly recommend looking for offers involving the Lenovo Legion Pro 5. There's one right now from Lenovo itself -- a $400 discount that pulls the machine's price down from $1,900 to $1,500. It's still not cheap, but we assure you that every penny spent on this gaming laptop will be worth it. You're going to have to hurry with your purchase if you don't want to miss out on getting the device at 21% off though, as its price may return to normal at any moment.

Why you should buy the Lenovo Legion Pro 5 gaming laptop
The Lenovo Legion Pro 5 is our top choice in our roundup of the best gaming laptops because of the fantastic value that it provides as a reasonably priced and well-built machine. It's powered by the AMD Ryzen 7 7745HX processor and the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card, plus 32GB of RAM that's enough to run multiple applications like streaming software and web browsers while playing the best PC games at their highest settings, according to our guide on how much RAM do you need. With these specifications, the Lenovo Legion Pro 5 is also prepared to play the best upcoming PC games without any need for further upgrades.

Read more