insight 

There were a couple of interesting stories in the news last week – a new CEO at denic the German registry and the intended transition away from .su the old suffix for Russia.

New appointments at denic

The news of the new appointments at denic is welcome. Sabine Dolderer and Dr. Jörg Schweiger will manage the business of DENIC eG as of 1 October as CEO and CTO respectively. We welcome these appointments and knowing Sabine of old we are sure she will do a good job for this important registry.

Retiring .su

The Register are running a story on the intended transition away from .su . This is a challenging matter for ICANN. As the world and its boundaries change, so the ISO list of countries and their 2 character ccTLDs change. If a country is no more, such as Zaire or Yugoslavia, then the relevant suffix is closed down and all domain names transitioned away. However, it’s not a simple process, as can be seen with the .su suffix, which is still registering names.

The story comments on other parts of the ISO list that cause ICANN headaches, including the comment that the UK ccTLD is .uk not .gb, as it is appears in the list. This appears to have stirred up some debate amongst the readership of EL Reg with several comments from their readership regarding why .uk is more appropriate and the usual end ramble from both sides of the pond about who invented the Internet anyway. Anyway, with more than 6 million domains we can assure you that .uk is here to stay.