They'll be registering .org names in Horsham

Oct. 18, 2002

On Jan. 1, some traffic in the virtual world will be directed to a local way station: Horsham.

On that day, Afilias Ltd., an Irish company whose U.S. offices are in Horsham, will begin to maintain the Internet registry of domain names that end in .org.

Domain names are akin to telephone numbers. They are unique worldwide identifiers of the people or entities that possess them. In fact, each domain name really masks a unique and long combination of numbers that would be impossible to remember let alone associate with specific individuals or groups such as the Red Cross.

The .org database contains 2.3 million names, making it the fifth-largest after the better-known .com and .net, and the less-familiar but prolific country codes for Germany and the United Kingdom, .de and .uk.

This week, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, the agency charged with allocating registries, announced that it was taking .org away from VeriSign, of Mountain View, Calif., the company that also operates .com and .net, and reassigning it to a nonprofit group called the Internet Society.

The agency, which is based in Marina del Rey, Calif., said it wanted to increase competition.

The Internet Society, in turn, contracted with Afilias to do the actual work. The society also set up a subsidiary, called the Public Interest Registry, to oversee Afilias.

More details at: http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/4309957.htm

Cheap Domain Name Registration Service