If you haven’t heard about IDNs and are interested in the history, NZS.com has covered the development of them over the last few years starting with initial consultation via working group in 2007, the resulting decisions of that working group to hold a sunrise registration period and then the final implementation by the New Zealand DNC of a first-come, first-served publicly available IDN registration on Wednesday 26 July 2010.

With the public registration of IDN’s being available for almost a year now, it seems like a good point to assess the usage of them across the wider NZ Internet.

The most recent domain registration data is from the June 2011 DNC newsletter showing that 440,576 .nz domains were active as at the end of May 2011.

The equivalent newsletter in 2010 shows the end of May 2010 with 399,151 active domains, a total of 41,425 additions over the calendar year. In comparison the calendar year prior to 1 April 2009 – 31 May 2010 shows an increase of 40,592.

So, as a whole the active domains show only a 2% growth in registrations over the calendar year that IDNs have been publicly available.

Active domains that are registered are however not even half of the story. The next things to consider are what % of the registered domains are IDN’s and further to that, what % of the domains are actively used as websites on the New Zealand Internet.

These numbers are significantly harder to find without direct access to the DNC records.

NZS.com completes regular spidering of the New Zealand Internet (well beyond just the .nz sphere) and currently profiles over 160,000 domains that are included in this set as active websites on the New Zealand Internet. It’s another entire blog post and discuss on the details of what we consider is a website on the New Zealand Internet, suffice to say that we’ve been working on the criteria in an iterative way for the last few years.

With this in place, NZS.com is in a reasonably unique position to ascertain how many active websites are using IDN’s on the NZ Internet particularly if we can come to a final figure on how many active domains there are that are IDNs and can calculate our % of active websites against that number.

Being in the same month as Māori language week, it’s of specific interest to also understand how many active websites are using the Māori macrons in the domain, that is one of ā, ē, ī, ō, or ū.

So, at the end of part one in this, we have the basic premise that domain registrations have not increased significantly however we still need to assess if real websites are using these characters or not…

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You can also find useful tips on the the basics like how to type a macron on your own system on this blog as well.

This policy was last reviewed five years ago when public consultation was sought for comment on a number of issues including introducing registrations in .nz at the second level and the process for creating a new second level domain.

The review resulted in changes to the process of creating a new second level domain but did not introduce .nz registrations at the second level.

Since that review, three new second level domain name extensions have been added to the .nz space, including .bank.nz, .parliament.nz and .health.nz. All three of these new second level domains are moderated ones.

The 2LD Policy sets out the general rules regarding the structure of the .nz domain name space. The policy currently includes the list of open and moderated second level domains, defining the communities of interest reflected in the .nz 2LD structure, and the criteria for new 2LDs and the process undertaken upon application for a new open or moderated second level domain. It also includes the procedure for closing an existing 2LD.

The Domain Name Commission welcomes comment on any aspect of the policy, and submissions will be published here on the DNC website.

The current policy can be viewed online.

Anyone is eligible to register a domain name using extensions such as .co.nz, .org.nz and .net.nz. You don’t need to be a New Zealand company to sign up for a domain and set up your own website. Many individuals and interest groups set up their own online presence, giving them a wider reach in New Zealand and internationally. Some domain spaces – .govt.nz, .mil.nz, .cri.nz and .iwi.nz – are moderated, meaning you must prove your eligibility for the domain extension.

Interesting NZ Internet statistics reveal that as a nation, New Zealand is steadily gathering more domains every year. The New Zealand Domain Name Commission (DNC) records show the total number of website addresses registered in this country. Internet stats for the last ten years (recorded at the end of each calendar year) make interesting reading:

Year – Registered Domain Names in New Zealand

1997 – 16,343
1998 – 26,991
1999 – 47,317
2000 – 83,052
2001 – 103,888
2002 – 120,833
2003 – 142,468
2004 – 174,061
2005 – 209,927
2006 – 261,283

As you can see, registration has continued at an impressive rate, as mentioned in an earlier post on New Zealand domain name statistics.

If putting yourself or your business on the Web is top of your New Year’s Resolution list, browse our list of domain name providers to find an NZ domain name that meets your needs.

As written by the DNC;

Some countries are beginning to implement Internationalised Doman Names (IDNs). IDNs allow the use of virtually any internationally recognised characters. This enables the registration of domain names in languages that use non-English characters, such as Te Reo Maori.

The working group is looking for consultation on a range of topics;

• What issues do you think are associated with implementing IDNs?
• What is their impact, and how do you think they should be prioritised?
• What other matters do you think the WG should consider?

You can have your say through submissions to the DNC website.

How many domains are registered in New Zealand? As at the 30th of June 2007 there were 281,365 domains registered in the .nz domain space, with a net increase of 4,904 domains, of which 88% were .co.nz domains.

Interesting statistics, when you consider that the current New Zealand population clock (from Statistics New Zealand) is running at 4,185,485.

That’s one domain for every 14 people in New Zealand and one domain for every five households. If you don’t have a domain, are you missing out on what the Jones’ have?