Earlier this year the Internet ran out of IPv4 addresses. Technically, that means that there is no more address space to give out on the Internet, even though ISPs are using techniques to keep the Internet running while we transition to a new larger network that will support the IPv6 addressing system. However, the amount of new Internet domain names continues to rise. In a new record posted by Verisign, it states that the Internet currently has a total of 209.8 million domains registered in the first quarter of 2011.
That number is a rise of 4.5 million domains since the last quarter of 2010. It's also a year-over-year rise of 15.3 million, or about 7.9 percent. As one might expect, the .com based addresses continue to be the most popular domain names. It was followed by .de (the Germany based domain address), .net, .uk (the United Kingdom-based domain address) and .org.
In addition, Verisign says that the renewal rates for the .com and .net domain names were 73.8 percent for the first quarter of 2011. That's a rise from 72.7 percent from the fourth quarter of 2010.
The Verisign report also warns against the threat of cyber attacks, which this year seem to have increased in both amounts and intensity. The report states, "Successfully defending against these threats will be critical to ensuring the continued stability and growth of the DNS infrastructure." Denial of Services attacks on web sites are still the biggest threats to the Internet, according to the report.
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