Domain name registrar

In a 1982 draft Request for Comments (RFC), editor Jonathan Postel proposed a "czar of domains."

[2] As the internet expanded in the early 1990s, becoming more commercial and international, the US government decided it could no longer provide domain name management free of charge.

In 1996, one such company, Ivan Pope's company, NetNames, developed the concept of a standalone commercial domain name registration service that would sell domain registration and other associated services to the public, effectively establishing the retail arm of an industry with the registries being the wholesalers.

[citation needed] NSI assimilated this model, which ultimately led to the separation of registry and registrar functions.

[citation needed] In 1997, PGMedia filed an antitrust suit against NSI citing the DNS root zone as an essential facility, and the US National Science Foundation (NSF) was joined as a defendant in this action.

In October 1998, following pressure from the growing domain name registration business and other interested parties, NSI's agreement with the United States Department of Commerce was amended.

Registrars who initially led the market but later were surpassed by rivals include Network Solutions and Dotster.

[citation needed] The competition created by the shared registration system enables end users to choose from many registrars offering a range of related services at varying prices.

Only the designated registrar may modify or delete information about domain names in a central registry database.

This involves a registrar processing public key data and creating DS records for addition into the parent zone.

[12] If a domain registration expires, irrespective of the reason, it can be difficult, expensive, or impossible for the original owner to get it back.

After the expiration date, the domain status often passes through several management phases, often for a period of months; usually it does not simply become generally available.

[13] The introduction of a shared registry system opened up the previous domain registration monopoly to new entities known as registrars, which were qualified by ICANN to do business.

The text would include legalese to confuse the end user into thinking that it is an official binding notice.

The published lists differ in which top-level domains (TLDs) they use; in the frequency of updates; and in whether their basic data is absolute numbers provided by registries, or daily changes derived from zone files.

Published rankings and reports include: ICANN registrar accreditation is a process established by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to ensure that gTLD domain registrars meet specific standards and requirements in providing gTLD domain registration services.

In addition, registrars are required to provide documentation confirming that they possess access to a minimum working capital of $70,000 at the time of application.