Domain Name News

.CA turns 25 years old today, nearing 2,000,000 registrations

Posted: 14 May 2012 11:31 AM PDT

The domain name registry that operates the .CA ccTLD, Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA), announced today that the .CA domain is turning 25 years old. The very first .CA domain name was registered to the University of Prince Edward Island in 1988. Currently there are 1,925,775 domains registered under .CA.

It was on this day back in 1987 that the .CA domain extension was officially delegated by Jon Postel, operator of Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), to John Demco at the University of British Columbia (UBC).

CIRA .CA

Demco and a group of volunteers ran the .CA domain registry for 13 years. From 1987 to 2000, those volunteers at UBC registered almost 60,000 domain names. Since 2000, the registry for .CA domain names has been run by the Ottawa-based Canadian Internet Registration Authority. CIRA's President and CEO Byron Holland said:

“We owe a debt to the visionaries who set up .CA in the 1980s. While many people today may take the Internet for granted, the fact is, without the foresight of people like John Demco, the Internet might not have developed as we now know it… The growth in both the size of the registry and in the role .CA plays in Canadians' lives bodes well for the next 25 years of .CA. As we move more and more of our lives online, .CA is becoming the 'flag on the virtual backpack' for hundreds of thousands of Canadians."

Back in 1987 when the .CA ccTLD was introduced the world wide web was a very different place. Very few Canadians were online, and until 1990 only governments and the academic community were able to register .CA domains. Today, .CA is an integral part of the Canadian economic and social landscape. Now with more than 1.9 million domain names registered, .CA is the world’s 14th-largest domain registry, and it has the fourth-highest growth rate over the past five years.

On April 15, 2008, CIRA registered it’s one millionth .CA domain name. The next big celebration is right around the corner it seems. In another few weeks give or take, they will be celebrating the two millionth .CA domain registration which will be another huge milestone for the Canadian ccTLD.

The registry has also just opened their nominations for their 2012 Board Elections.