World adds 5 million domains in the last quarter of 2013, DNS outages could be threat for startups: Report

Five million domains name were added to the Internet in the fourth quarter of 2013, bringing the total number of registered domain names to 271 million worldwide across all top-level domains (TLDs) as of December 31, 2013, according to a study released by VeriSign.

The increase in domain names equates to a growth rate of 1.9 percent over the third quarter of 2013. Meanwhile, worldwide registrations have grown by 18.5 million (or 7.3 percent) on a yearly basis, the study states.

The .com and .net TLDs experienced aggregate growth in the fourth quarter of 2013, reaching a combined total of approximately 127.2 million domain names in the adjusted zone for .com and .net. This represents a five percent increase year over year. As of December 31, 2013, the base of registered names in .com equalled 112 million names, while .net equalled 15.2 million names.

During the same period, Verisign's average daily Domain Name System (DNS) query load was 82 billion across all TLDs operated by Verisign, with a peak of 100 billion. Compared to the previous quarter, the daily average increased 0.9 percent and the peak decreased 5.5 percent. Year over year, the daily average increased 6.4 percent and the peak decreased 19.2 percent.

The report outlines the need of enterprises for resilient infrastructures which maintain 24/7 availability. DNS outages remain major concern for the businesses, reveals the report.

Importance of domain names for tech companies

Choosing a name for your startup is very crucial as it largely depends upon the availability of the domain name rather than what you have decided. The psychology behind a good domain name lies in the fact how easy it is to remember and type the domain name.

Last year, Mumbai-based real-estate aggregator Housing had bought .com extension for $1 million for the sake of better brand connotation and recognition on a global level.

Besides Housing, social networking giant Facebook bought the domain name fb.com for close to $8.5 million from American Farm Bureau Federation. GitHub.com bought GHUB.com for 12,600 USD in September 2012.

Recommended read: How your domain name can make or break your business.