During his CloudFest keynote, Andy Simpson, principal data scientist at Verisign, explored how one can use domain names in new customer engagement strategies. Verisign is the back-end registry for .COM and .NET, among others – it is a global provider of domain-name registry services, security, and internet infrastructure; enabling internet navigation for many of the world’s most recognized brands. Simpson shared sources for new customers, as well as details on the types of domain names that might help a customer engage with the services that a provider offers.
Study Domain Names
Andy Simpson has made the study of domain names his priority.
“We’re responsible for 151.7 million domain names.” said Simpson. “We get to be part of an ecosystem that’s been designed from the bottom up to hyperscale!”
The entire system was designed to spread load over a large area – an area the size of the planet. Simpson noted that end users don’t think of the DNS at all: they only think of what they do with it. It becomes a chicken-and-egg scenario, since users think in terms of “I want to buy a domain name” or “I want to build a website”; and both of those desires are intrinsically linked.
From its inception, the Domain Name System (DNS) was designed to scale. Domain names are a foundational component of how many cloud services customers help end users engage with their products. Proposed and created by Paul Mockapetris in 1983, the DNS has recently come into the crosshairs of disruption as debate rages on whether or not it should be replaced in an age of rapid network onboarding of smart – and IoT devices. We know the DNS is stable, but can it scale the way we need it to?
Not only does the DNS scale, but it can also hyperscale… and hyperscale it must: Domain name registrations have grown by approximately 11.7 million, or 3.5%, year over year – Q3 of 2018 closed with around 342 million domain name registrations across all TLDs (top-level domains, for domaining newbies), and roughly 45% of those were tried-and-true .COM and .NET registrations.
