VeriSign Submits Proposal to ICANN to Retain Administration of .Net

January 20, 2005; 02:13 AM

Mountain View, CA. - January 21, 2005 - (DomainInformer) - VeriSign, Inc. (Nasdaq: VRSN), the leading provider of intelligent infrastructure services for Internet and telecommunications networks, today announced it has submitted a formal proposal to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to retain the administration and operation of the .net Top-Level Domain (TLD).

VeriSign's proposal is supported by an outstanding record of providing 100 percent availability of .net TLD resolution services and 100 percent zone file accuracy over the last seven years, as well as an investment of more than $150 million into building a world-class Internet infrastructure that reliably handles more than 4 billion .net Domain Name System (DNS) queries each day.

The .net TLD forms the critical backbone of the Internet's infrastructure for e-commerce and communications. In fact, .net supports more than $700 billion in annual e-commerce, 3 trillion annual page views, 300 billion annual e-mails, 58 percent of all Internet computer "hosts", and more than five million domain names. Moreover, .net is relied upon by approximately 8.5 million users in other TLDs that use .net name servers.

What's more, network operators, domain registrars, businesses, governments, and consumers depend upon the security and stability of the .net infrastructure. To ensure this certainty, VeriSign has invested millions of dollars each year maintaining and upgrading the computer infrastructure that processes more than 500,000..com/.netDNS queries per second during peak conditions and more than 50 million (225 million peak) registration transactions per day.

"The average business owner and the average consumer have very little awareness of how critical .net is to the Internet's ability to function efficiently, but they would sorely miss .net if it were to go down for even a short period of time," said Stephen Borcich of Sun Microsystems, Inc. "VeriSign is one of the world's leading providers of Internet infrastructure and they've proven time and again that they know how to secure, operate, and administer global, mission-critical systems."

"We're very pleased to compete for the opportunity to continue administering, operating and securing one of the Internet's most vital pieces of infrastructure—the .net Top-Level Domain," said Mark McLaughlin, Senior Vice President and General Manager of VeriSign's Naming and Directory Services. "While we are very proud of our stellar record running .net, we are not resting on our laurels and intend to continually improve its global accessibility and features."

VeriSign's proposal to retain administration and operation of the .net Registry is supported by Sun Microsystems, Microsoft, and MCI among other major companies. Over the past five years, VeriSign has developed and deployed a DNS system called the Advanced Transaction Lookup and Signaling System (ATLAS) that supports the operation of .net and maintains multiple Internet protocols, while capable of processing many billions of Internet queries per day without going down. ATLAS was named "one of the year's best innovations" by InfoWorld Magazine and was cited by ICANN Chairman Vint Cerf as an example of innovation in his evaluation of new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs).

In September, VeriSign installed a system of rapid updates that distributes domain updates every few seconds to accommodate all changes to .net. With this new rapid update process, domain registrants are now able to add a new domain name, change their hosting provider or make other changes to their domain name, and see those changes reflected in the.net DNS servers within minutes.

In support of .net, VeriSign operates 18 domain name constellation sites around the world that monitor and process global Internet traffic, provides customer service 24 hours a day, seven days per week, every day of the year in 150 languages, and maintains a TLD monitoring system called HUD that allows governments and Internet "root" operators to monitor usage and trends of the .net domain.

About VeriSign
VeriSign, Inc. (Nasdaq: VRSN) delivers intelligent infrastructure services that make the Internet and telecommunications networks more reliable and secure. Every day VeriSign helps thousands of businesses and millions of consumers conduct commerce and communications with confidence. Additional news and information about the company is available at http://www.verisign.com/.

For more information, contact: VeriSign Media Relations: Patrick Burns, [email protected], 703-948-4471 VeriSign Investor Relations: Tom McCallum, [email protected], 650-426-3744