Verisign has the right to raise hosting costs 7% in four of the next six years after a December extension of a 1999 deal with ICANN granted the company control of the .com domain through 2012. Four months later, Verisign cited growing security costs and a new project to increase the capacity of domain name system servers as the main reasons for the $0.42 increase in .com wholesale prices to $6.42 and the $0.35 increase for .net domains to $3.85, which will take effect on October 15. The fees cover maintenance costs for each domain. The company sells the rights to registrars and hosting companies, who then rent the domains to consumers. The new pricing will primarily affect registrars, who might pass on the additional costs to consumers and businesses registering new domains.
VeriSign said that the increases were required because the internet is becoming more crowded and dangerous. The company claims that since 1999, the traffic load on its systems has increased by a factor 30 to 30 billion. In order to handle the traffic boom, Verisign plans to launch "Project Titan" which will increase the capacity of its DNS servers tenfold over the next three years. The company also cites a 700% in attacks since 2000, along with predicted rises of 50% in each of the next two years as requiring investments in security systems.