Changing a Web hosting provider and domain-name information just got easier.
VeriSign Inc. on Thursday announced it has sped up its updating of the .com and .net domains. Rather than twice a day, the registry now is sending a file of .com and .net changes every few seconds to the 13 distributed DNS servers for the domains.
The result is more instantaneous propagation of information on new name servers for specific domain names, said Matt Larson, a principal engineer at VeriSign.
Under the previous batch approach, a domain-name registrant often would wait as long as 24 hours before changes to name-server information would trickle through the entire DNS, Larson said. That could lead to possible downtime when switching web hosting providers.
“Now you dont have a situation where you send the information to your registrar and have to wait for the information to propagate,” Larson said.
The enhancement, which VeriSign is calling “rapid updates,” also could help Internet Service Providers and Web sites respond to emergencies, such as an outage of a name server, by being able to more quickly make domain changes, he said.
The “rapid updates” feature is part of the Mountain View, Calif., companys larger technology platform called ATLAS, or Advanced Transaction Look-up and Signaling system. ATLAS includes VeriSigns homegrown name servers for the management of .com and .net, the Internets two most-popular generic domains with more than 35 million domain names.
As a registry, VeriSign works with more than 200 registrars, the companies through which businesses and individuals register domain names and provide name server information.
The accelerated updates come as domain-name registrations themselves are on the upswing. In June, VeriSign reported that registrations had reached record levels.
VeriSign manages .com and .net through an agreement with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the nonprofit oversight body of the DNS. The two are embroiled in a legal fight over the extent of ICANNs authority.
VeriSigns contract for managing .net also is due to expire next year, and ICANN is developing a process for opening that domain to bidders.
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