Prices for '.com' and '.net' to rise

The master-keeper of Internet addresses ending in ".com" and ".net" - two of the most popular domain name suffixes - said it would raise fees charged to register those names. The annual levy for ".com" will increase 7% to $6.42, and the ".net" fee will go up 10% to $3.85. The per-name fees are what VeriSign Inc. collects from companies that sell domain names on its behalf. With about 62 million ".com" names and 9.1 million ".net" names in use, VeriSign stands to ultimately make $29 million a year from the increase, which will take effect Oct. 15. Customers can lock in the old prices until Oct. 14.

VeriSign runs the Domain Name System computers that keep track of all the ".com" and ".net" names in use. Computers from around the world check them continually to find out how to reach ".com" and ".net" Web sites and pass along e-mail. VeriSign also runs the computers that list all 266 domain name suffixes, such as ".fr" for France and ".biz" for businesses. Fees for other domains aren't going up, but VeriSign could use the ".com" and ".net" revenue to subsidize upgrades.

The company said the fee increases, the first since 1999, stem from a need to keep up with growing online use as well as threats from hackers. VeriSign spokesman Tom Galvin said VeriSign's DNS computers now get 30 billion queries a day, compared with 1 billion in 2000, while security exploits have grown eightfold over that period. Under a deal reached in November with the U.S. Commerce Department and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers [ICANN], VeriSign could increase ".com" prices as much as 7% during four out of the six years the contract is in effect.

- As soon as I read this article, I went ahead and renewed post1.net for the next 4 years.

(2007-04-24 23:27:04 SGT) [Biz] Permalink

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