According to an ICANN announcement released on Thursday July 24 , Chinese NASDAQ-listed internet hosting company 21Vianet and ICANN have jointly installed an important upgrade to the global Domain Name System (DNS) in Beijing. The DNS is the master database matching all domain names (such as tldland.cn or 域名.在线) to the IP addresses for their web-servers. The upgrade, known as a "L-Root instance" or "node" is the world's latest authorative DNS server. The server is running live in 21Vianet's Beijing datacenter now, and according to TLD Registry's CTO Raymond Li, is "an important and valuable new contributor to the global internet's resiliance." According toICANN, the new Beijing L-Root node will increase “the Domain Name System’s (DNS) overall fault tolerance and its resilience against certain types of cyber threats, such as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.” Beijing is just one of many eventual cities in China to receive a new L-Root installation. TLD Registry would like to publicly congratulate the efforts and productivity of ICANN, as well as 21Vianet’s CEO Mr. Josh Sheng Chen and our friend, 21Vianet Vice President James Seng for their community-spirited efforts to making the internet a progressively better tool. Considered as one of the pioneers of the internet in Singapore, James Seng contributed immensely to the invention and evolution of Chinese domain names (or, "IDNs" in the industry parlance), so it’s no surprise that his involvement and professional expertise was one of the driving forces behind the installation of the L-Root node in China. Arto Isokoski, TLD Registry...

TLD Registry’s Dot Chinese Online (.在线) and Dot Chinese Website (.中文网) are garnering more attention in the blogosphere, as demonstrated by a flattering new FairWinds Partners blog post today. FairWinds’ Founding Partner, Phil Lodico, mentions several business, social and cultural benefits that registrants enjoy with fully-Chinese domain names. One of the benefits raised by Mr. Lodico includes the fact that businesses will be exposed to the massive Chinese internet user population and consumer market. “Chinese-character TLDs offer Western businesses a way to tap into the vast Chinese consumer market in an organic and culturally adaptive way,” Lodico wrote. “It’s time for American businesses to take notice, and consider if they should have a presence in this space.” Another benefit mentioned by Mr. Lodico is that these businesses have the chance to be in the front of the line to invest in brand new, unused Chinese-language TLDs. “It makes sense for businesses to register their brand names first in the Chinese IDNs,” Lodico wrote. We are delighted that Mr Lodico’s internationally-respected internet strategy consultancy has independently arrived at the same conclusions as we did six long years ago, when we first applied for Dot Chinese Online and Dot Chinese Website. Given the TLDs market-leading position (no other non-English new gTLD is ranked higher, in terms of domains registered, than our two Chinese TLDs), we congratulate FairWinds on their conclusions and recommendations! We believe that it is time to kiss your ASCII goodbye. As more attention is given highlighting the value of IDN’s, particularly Dot Chinese Online and Dot Chinese Website, the English-character (“ASCII”) dominance of domain names will come to an end. This will make the internet world more clear, concise, and straightforward for the people in non-Chinese language user communities – very definitely including China’s 650 million internet users. And that’s the way it should be. “If a brand has or desires a presence in Chinese markets, new IDN TLDs are worth serious consideration,” Lodico advises. We couldn’t agree more. Mr. Lodico’s post is has appeared across the web, and is sourced from China’s Changing Internet Domain Name Landscape. Mitch Watkins, TLD...

How to invest in Chinese domains without knowing a word of Chinese? Its a great feeling having the world's most popular Chinese "new gTLD" domains. Since their public launch ten weeks ago, Dot Chinese Online (.在线) and Dot Chinese Website (.中文网) have rocketed to the number 1 and 2 positions in namestat's "Internationalized Domain Names" (IDN) leaderboard. Many of the world's most successful domain name investors have already bought our domains. In fact, our first premium domain name auction, held in Macau in April, is still the most successful in ICANN's new gTLD program (we raised USD184,000 for 33 domain name lots). And during our first month of general availability, more than USD580,000 in Dot Chinese Online & Dot Chinese Website domains were sold to end-users and investors. The extensive media coverage our domains' strong performance has resulted in our fielding dozens of enquiries from western domain name investors who want to know how other western domainers selected such great domains. The simple answer, of course, is that they got some help from Chinese domain name experts. That got us thinking. Since the TLD Registry team is arguably amongst the world's leading Chinese domain name experts, how could we scale our experts' knowledge for the good of domainers everywhere? Our new tool, ChineseLandrush.com is an answer. ChineseLandrush.com is an innovative new way to help non-Chinese speakers to understand and invest in Chinese domains. At ChineseLandrush.com, visitors will always find 500 great, hand-made domain name suggestions. Note well: the suggestions are not yet registered, and they're not registry-reserved. The 500 domain name suggestions are yours for the taking. Our suggestions are hand-made by our team of Chinese domain experts in Beijing, Hong Kong and New York. For ChineseLandrush.com we never use automated "domain spinning" tools. Our domain suggestions encompass categories from activities, sports and hobbies, common prhases, food, geographic, immigration and travel, medical, and more than a dozen other relevant categories. If you register a free account and log-into ChineseLandrush.com, you have access to our powerful custom list tool. You can add your domain choices to your cart, and "check out" by downloading a handy spreadsheet file. Then, you can easily copy-and-paste your list into the bulk-registration page at the domain registrar of your choice. Every night, our automated systems scan yesterday's domain registrations and cleanse the suggestions database of new domains. The list of 500 domain suggestions is then replenished from our "hopper" of several thousand hand-made suggestions. And if you have 6 minutes to invest in developing your knowledge of Chinese domaining, we'd invite you to watch the three short videos on the home page. We hope you'll agree with us that ChineseLandrush.com is a welcome addition to...

On the first day of ICANN's 50th meeting -- Sunday 22nd June, 2014 -- TLD Registry hosted a pleasure cruise for many of our business partners and friends. What we originally called the TLD Registry British Summer Cruise was retitled "Chinese Domains on the Thames", as soon as our guest and partner Daniel Greenberg (of Lexsynergy) coined the name! Over four hours, we sailed many miles of the River Thames from the Chelsea Cadogan Pier and back. We've posted a couple of hundred great photos at our Flickr page, all free to download and...

TLD Registry's 2nd Principal Sponsorship of China's largest domain name registrar, Xinnet's partner conference roadshow concluded in Nanjing today. China's old southern capital was today the epicentre of China's domain name business, with around 250 of the region's most influential domain resellers gathering to enjoy Xinnet's and TLD Registry's sales trainings and hospitality. TLD Registry's CEO Arto Isokoski, CMO Simon Cousins and Partner Relations Manager Claire Zhang gave a rousing seminar, focusing on the world's most registered IDN new gTLDs, Dot Chinese Online (.在线) & Dot Chinese Website (.中文网).  Our traditional lucky draw of a beautiful Chow Sang Sang gold buillion followed, and the day concluded with a luxury buffet lunch at Nanjing's Sofitel Galaxy Hotel. Our sales training paid off! The same afternoon, Xinnet proudly reported a single sale of 500 name-years for Dot Chinese Online & Dot Chinese Website domains! Xinnet is already China's leading registrar for new gTLD domains under management, and today's sale puts the registrar further ahead. We'd like to thank not only Xinnet for the opportunity to partner with such a great registrar, but also the almost-700 Chinese domain resellers which we have met and trained this week. Thank you all for your support of Dot Chinese Online & Dot Chinese Website! PS, congratulations to our lucky draw winner, Mr 吴建龙of 物流114!        ...