Internet Domain Names Surpass 180 Million in First Quarter

A total of 1.4 million Domain Names in India

- Latest VeriSign Industry Brief Sheds Light on How DNS Powers the Internet

The Internet now encompasses more than 180 million domain names, according to the first quarter 2009 Domain Name Industry Brief published by VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ: VRSN), the trusted provider of Internet infrastructure services for the networked world.

The first quarter of 2009 ended with a total base of nearly 183 million domain name registrations across all of the Top Level Domain Names (TLDs). This represents a three percent increase over the fourth quarter of 2008 and a 12 percent increase over the same quarter from last year.

Total base of domain names in India was 1.4 million as of March 31, 2009, with approximately 800,000 .com and .net domain names.

Country Code TLDs (ccTLDs) rose to 74.1 million domain names globally during the first quarter, a four percent jump from the previous quarter and an 18 percent increase year over year.. Gauged by total registrations, .com remains the most popular TLD category, followed by .cn (China), .de (Germany) and .net. This composition remains unchanged from Q4 2008.

The first quarter is historically strong for registrations in the domain name industry, and Q1 2009 was no exception, with an average of 2.4 million new .com and .net registrations added each month. During the quarter, the overall base of .com and .net domain names grew to 92.4 million domain names. That total represents a two percent increase from Q4 2008, a jump of nine percent over the same quarter of the previous year, and an increase of 34 percent over the first quarter of 2007.

During the quarter, VeriSign continued its 11-year track record of providing 100 percent uptime for DNS queries. VeriSign's daily DNS query load averaged 38 billion during the first quarter of 2009, resulting in hundreds of millions of Internet users accessing Web sites or sending email. This is an increase from the 35 billion queries in fourth quarter 2008.

Revealing Analysis of DNS Queries and Resolution

The latest VeriSign Domain Name Industry Brief also spotlights VeriSign's analysis of DNS queries and DNS resolution. In addition to provisioning domain names, a domain name registry operator enables users to actually reach those domain names by resolving the domain names to an Internet address that serves the content users seek.