Smooth Sailing with .ORG Transition

Just weeks after taking control of
the .ORG TLD registry from VeriSign , the non-profit
Public Interest Registry (PIR) announced the successful transition of the
registry’s technical systems.

The Reston, Va.-based PIR said the transition, which took place over the
weekend, was unaffected by the Slammer
worm attack and by Monday morning, more than 1,800 domain names had
already been registered under the new technical system, which is being
handled by Afilias.

The transition is being hailed as the “largest transfer of data from one
registry to another in the history of the Internet” and PIR chairman David
Maher told reporters the plan is to improve the visibility of the .ORG top
level domain for the non-commercial community.

The .ORG domain, used mostly by non-commercial groups and institutions,
is the third largest TLD behind the popular .COM and .NET suffixes.More
than 2.6 million .ORG domain names have been registered worldwide and PIR,
which was created by the Internet Society,
said that number continues to grow rapidly.

“Within the first 30 minutes of reopening the registry after the data was
transferred [on Sunday morning], PIR completed over 18,000 transactions and
supported over 170 concurrent connections,” Maher said. The new registry
began registering domain names at a rate of 1 domain name every 6 seconds
but while may be registered, updates and changes to .ORG domain names won’t
be allowed until January 28 while the registry continues testing to ensure
the stability of the system, he explained.

He said PIR was able to complete the cutover well within the 48-hour
window included in the original plan. The zone file — the authoritative
source for all .ORG names, published to servers and routers around the
world — was completely shifted from VeriSign Registry to Afilias.

VeriSign relinquished administration of the .ORG domain to comply with an
agreement they entered into with ICANN and the U.S. Department of Commerce
in May 2001.