auDA registry operator, Afilias Australia, wins Guinness World Records title

Posted by auDA on 19 September 2018

auDA, Australia’s own .au namespace administrator would like to congratulate its registry operator, Afilias Australia, for winning a Guinness World Records title overnight.

The award, presented in New York, was made for the successful and seamless transition of the 3.1 million .au domain names from the previous operator on the turn of the 2018 financial year.

It was the single largest migration of an internet top level domain registry in the world.

“It may not sound sexy, but the award is a significant achievement”, auDA CEO, Cameron Boardman said.

“The .au namespace is so ubiquitous that people take it for granted, but the migration from our previous registry operator to Afilias Australia could have had serious consequences for the economy, but it went seamlessly.

“The planning, preparation, testing and execution were the auDA equivalent of preparing for Y2K.

“And as with Y2K when people awoke on July 1, 2018 they didn’t notice a thing.

“If the internet broke because of the transfer the digital economy, of which the .au namespace is the backbone, could have ground to a halt.”

The Victorian Minister for Innovation and the Digital Economy, Philip Dalidakis, said the migration was a wonderful technological achievement and shows that Melbourne is a tech hub in the Asia Pacific region.

“This transition highlights the great technical capability we have here in Melbourne and I congratulate auDA and Afilias Australia on this great achievement which will ensure the smooth functioning of the millions of websites that underpin the Australian economy.”

For Australian users the transition means that Australia now has its own network of dedicated servers in every capital city which improves security and speed of operations for the .au network.

With the .au name space being an essential piece of national digital infrastructure Afilias Australia will help ensure the operational stability, security and integrity of the internet in Australia.

With the use of digital technologies expected to contribute up to $250 billion to the economy by 2025 the security of the .au network and confidence in it is paramount to the growth of the digital economy.

auDA, with its registry operator Afilias Australia, is now positioned to help spur this economic growth with businesses being able to have absolute confidence in the security, speed and reliability of the network.

The .au namespace is already one of the most secure in the world.

The not-for-profit Spamhaus Project that tracks spam and related cyber threats such as phishing, malware and botnets ranks  the .au namsespace with an index score of just 0.01 making it one of the safest amongst the top 25  top level domains in the world.

With Afilias Australia’s nationwide dedicated network businesses using the .au prefix can now have even more confidence in the operations of the .au network.

Mr Boardman said as a result of Afilias Australia winning the competitive tender to become the registry operator:

  • .com.au, net.au, org.au, id.au, asn.au, edu.au, and gov.au names will be able to be registered for between one and five years instead of just two;
  • auDA would have a new $12 million marketing, innovation and security program over 4 years to increase the awareness and use of .au; and,
  • there would be a 10 percent reduction in wholesale fees for .au names.

 

These changes directly benefit users of the .au namespace by reducing barriers of entry and also by promoting the .au namespace over other worldwide competitor namespaces.

Competition in the digital economy is growing, not just in Australia but worldwide.

By marketing and promoting the .au namespace businesses that use the prefix will have a competitive advantage as more people become aware of the security and compliance issues surrounding the domain namespace worldwide.

With Afilias Australia’s record being recognised internationally it can only help awareness of the strengths of the .au namespace which is great for Australian businesses, Mr Boardman said.