iEstates.com

German based HEXONET, a domain technology solutions provider, recently announced that they are now managing over a million domains for clients, resellers and partners. The one millionth domain milestone is a goal that many registrars strive for and HEXONET reached this goal last month.

The company empowers resellers to privately brand many unique internet services, including domain names available in hundreds of ccTLD’s via an API and web at wholesale prices. This is all done through 1API, an ICANN accredited registrar operated by HEXONET. Today thousands of resellers, startups, and service providers world-wide make HEXONET their solution provider of choice when it comes to registering domains, web hosting, private label dns services and ssl certificates.

HEXONET is headquartered in Homburg, Germany and has a North American subsidiary, HEXONET Services Inc. based out of Vancouver, Canada. It was in February of 2009 when Robert Birkner founded HEXONET Services Inc., the North American arm of HEXONET GmbH with former Key-Systems CEO and founder Jens Wagner.

Before joining HEXONET, Robert held important posts throughout the domain industry including General Manager of Hostway Canada, General Manager of Domainpeople Inc., Director of Global Domains at Hostway Corporation, and Director of Sales and International Business at Key-Systems GmbH.

Robert is known throughout the domain industry for his expertise on the industry’s business policy, market insight, product development, and especially for understanding the needs of end users and registrars. Robert also consulted on the re-launch of the .ME domain registry in 2008.

In recent years, the company has had a strong presence in domain conferences such as Domainfest and DNCruise, as well as ICANN meetings. Getting some big domain investment companies and professional domainers to come on board and use HEXONET’s platform has surely helped the company reach the 1 millionth milestone much faster than they probably expected.

After the jump you can find some of the highlights from the recent blog post announcement by Robert Birkner, Chief Strategy Officer at HEXONET Global, and founder & president of HEXONET Services Inc. in Vancouver, Canada.

A Hard Journey to 1 Million Domains:

1. Like any expanding company we have seen growing pains when it came to our employees.  Looking back on both the good and the bad, HEXONET has definitely seen the benefit of bringing in new ideas and minds into our organization.  New blood in the company exposed areas we were weak and helped us identify where we could improve.  Today the team is as talented and as strong as ever.  And we are now looking to add even more amazing people to our team.  Many lessons learned and many issues overcome.

2. Handling security as we grow has been a challenge, but we are on top of it.  Our biggest attack was about a year ago when HEXONET was hit with a massive DDOS.  The attack was on a unprecedented scale with over 2 million queries per second on all our servers generating over 80 Gbits of bandwidth.  This DDOS even saturated our upstream provider’s datacenter, one of Europe’s largest Internet hubs.  We are happy to announce that through proactive measures and procedures no DDOS attacks has affected HEXONET since this last incident.

Many Successes Along the Way:

1. Our reseller and partner network is growing exponentially.  Hosting companies, registrar service providers, domain resellers, domainers, and small businesses are now realizing the strength of HEXONET’s advanced and PROVEN technology platform.  In our opinion, for TLDs and especially ccTLDs, no other platform or service compares.

More than a decade ago, nearly all companies designed their systems for a handful of dominant TLDs (COM/NET), HEXONET on the contrary believed that eventually hundreds if not thousands of TLDs would be the norm.  So today, while others struggle and even hack every new TLD into their in-congruent systems, HEXONET seamlessly adds new TLDs, as our platform was designed to scale from the very beginning.  Even more important is the many years of engineering and operational knowledge held by our staff and engineers.  We can answer questions about the smallest operational and architectural nuisances for TLDs, a skill that only reveals itself when working with a registry system for years and years.

2. Our Registrar Operations Center platform (RegistrarOC), has also been garnering a lot of interest as well as clients among large corporate customers.  These clients with their own accreditations and a large number of domains now realize that there is a huge cost (time and salaries) to update and maintain their own registrar platform.  This is where RegistrarOC steps in and not only saves these companies money, but eliminates a huge operational and engineering burden.  Interestingly enough, prominent law firms are now becoming ICANN accredited to manage their clients domains.  Since law firms are typically not technical, many have turned to RegistrarOC and HEXONET to manage their accreditations.

3. With HEXONET’s platforms gaining popularity, many newTLDs have even come to us asking for help with running a house registrar of their own.  As a result, some .BRAND TLDs have committed to running their own house registrar service through 1API (HEXONET’s house registrar) or through utilizing RegistrarOC.

The Journey Continues – What to Expect:

1. A new and more friendly website launching this summer.

2. A newer and easier to use “orderform” to be progressively released throughout the year.  With each release new features will be available for clients.

3. More Control Panel enhancements and upgrades.  All these updates are from direct feedback and requests from our clients.  Some cool new bulk management features are coming!

4. General public “Domain for Sale” listing service on HEXONET’s domain auction platform PremiumSale.com.  The site and auction service at PremiumSale.com has received tremendous feedback and now we are going to opening it up for members to auction off their own domains through the platform.

Even though we surpassed the 1 million domain goal for the company, we are not resting.  HEXONET continues to work hard for our customers.  Again to all our customers, resellers, and partners, thank you for your support and patronage.

Related posts:

• Domain Registrar Tucows/OpenSRS Reaches 10 Million Domains Under Management
• GoDaddy Passes 45 million Domain Registrations
• MeetDomainers Announces Domains For September 25 Auction
• Sedo MLS Domains now Offered Through United Domains
• portfolio management tool

According to an email from Sedo, SedoMLS Premium listed domains are now also promoted  through United Domains. United Domains has integrated Sedo’s multi-listing service, SedoMLS Premium, for its US-based clients, allowing domain sellers to list their domain portfolio for sale at Sedo, and have potential buyers search for and purchase these domain listings directly at their registrar’s website.

“With SedoMLS Premium, we have extended our domain name market to additional US clients,” said Tim Schumacher, Sedo’s CEO. “This is an ideal sales channel for international domain sellers and for those interested in domains, purchasing a domain name is now as easy as registering it.”

Florian Huber, CEO of United Domains, confirms the benefits of such a partnership: “United Domains has built a successful partnership with Sedo as a preferred registrar, and we are very excited about expanding our partnership to include the Sedo MLS program,” he said. “By adding the Sedo MLS Premium service to our search results, we can to offer our customers a wide selection of premium domains for purchase, as easily as they can register new domains with us.”

SedoMLS Premium for domain sellersis an additional channel for displaying their domain listings to potential buyers. As soon as a user carries out a search on their registrar’s website, SedoMLS Premium provides them with the opportunity to purchase a domain that is already registered by another party at a fixed price, and complete the transfer through the SedoMLS Premium partner’s site.

United Domains will also be further expanding its partnership with Sedo by integrating its own sales inventory into the SedoMLS Premium network in 2012.

As reported earlier the Cyrillic .РФ IDN ccTLD launch had reached a stunning number of 500,000 registrations in the first week. Considering the numbers, it was obvious that speculators were playing the TLD, but apparently six registrars are involved in registering many of the names for resale & auction and are now involved in a legal dispute as reported by TheMoscowNews. Many of the registered names have been frozen by the registry.

The accused registrar, RU-Center said there are no plans to stop sales, with spokesman Andrei Vorobyov saying: “We do not believe we have violated the law or the rules of the co-ordinating centre.”At the end of last week the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service (FAS) launched legal action against six registrars claiming they had broken competition laws.

Apparently the RU-Center itself bought 38% of the names registered and acquired another 48% of the registered domains through partner companies – a total of 86%.

[via TheMoscowNews & DomainIncite]

(c) 2010 DomainNameNews.com (2)

[Ed. Updated - Hagon Lovells is not the first law firm to gain an ICANN accreditation]

According to a post by World Trademark Review Hogan Lovells is the first law firm to obtain an ICANN Accreditation, however Ladas actually was accredited much earlier. The company intends the new registrar to help their clients register domain names, for example in the sunrise periods for new TLDs.

DNN was not yet able to locate the company’s public registrar site required website, as their link on the ICANN website points to a login screen hosted on Anchovy.com.

[via WTR]

(c) 2010 DomainNameNews.com

[Update] The registrar has been sold.

DomainConsultant.com, mostly known for their Domain Madness auctions so far have a special item that is being auctioned today – an entire domain registrar business. The business is an ICANN accredited company that has about 8,000 domains under management and uses “DomainName.com” as their brand. You can find a breakdown of their existing registrations, for which they currently charge $29.95(!) per year, below. The customer base also includes 200 hosting accounts with an annual revenue of $200 each.

While the Buy It Now price of $3,000,000 USD expired yesterday, bidders are welcome to bring forward their bids by visiting DomainConsultant or send an email to Mike Fiol at mike (at) domainconsultant.com.

The auction started at 9am EDT today and will end at 3pm EDT.

Disclaimer: Adam Strong, Managing Editor of DNN, also is a consultant with DomainConsultant.com.

(c) 2010 DomainNameNews.com

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As  Andrew at Domain Name Wire revealed, Fabulous.com is going to be releasing a new solution for Registrars and Resellers by the name of Yexa. According to the PDF published on the preview site, that also hosts a sign-up form for the beta of the software, The software is going to allow customers to sell domains, SSL certificates and Hosting.

DNN chatted with Jen Sale about the launch and the features of the new product via Instant Messaging. Read the full interview and learn more about the new product after the jump.

DNN: Thank you Jen for taking the time to talk to DNN today about this new product by the name of Yexa you are going to be launching at HostingCon. Can you tell us more about it?

Jen Sale: Thanks Frank! Of course. Approximately six months ago, we were on the hunt for an all-inclusive platform to manage a new retail registrar. We spent almost two months researching and testing a number of solutions but found them confusing, incomplete and expensive. Plus, there wasn’t just one solution that would do everything we required, or at the level of quality we expect for both ourselves and our customers. It was at this point we discussed creating our own solution, and many of the people we spoke to along the way expressed great interest in what we planned to develop.

For our initial product release, we have developed two software solutions – Yexa Registrar and Yexa Reseller. These two products are designed to work in conjunction with each other, and will address the gap we believe exists in the current marketplace. Yexa Registrar provides a fully functional white-labelled registry-registrar manager with a built-in reseller network. Yexa Reseller provides a cohesive, easy to set up and use, retail-facing domain and hosting solution.

DNN: So who are those two solutions mostly meant for existing registrars and resellers or new ones? It seems an interesting expansion of focus for you, considering you are launching it at a hosting conference.

Jen Sale: The two software solutions will cater to both existing and new registrars and resellers.

Yexa Registrar services individuals with ICANN and/or other ccTLD accreditation. This allows them to manage either their own personal domains directly (domainers), or operate a retail registrar with the option of creating their own reseller network.

Yexa Reseller services people wanting to run a retail-facing domain and hosting business, regardless of whether they’re an ICANN registrar or not. Existing resellers who wish to expand their customer offerings, and/or explore better provider offerings, can integrate Yexa Reseller which will support existing software via a comprehensive API.

One of the things we’ve been repeatedly asked for is an interface similar to Fabulous.com, and whether we’d be white-labelling it in the future. So this product is really a natural progression for us in offering domain services to our domain portfolio customers, and also extending into new business.

We’ve been on both sides of the fence, and have found the market distinctly lacking in suitable solutions, and we think we can do better.

DNN: Considering Fabulous.com’s background it seems that the software is mostly focused on selling domain names, yet the brochure also mentions SSL Certificates and hosting. Are you going to be offering a suite of different products?

Jen Sale: Yexa Registrar is targeted to domain operators (registrars). Yexa Reseller enables someone to create and manage a website which sells a number of web services, which may include domains, hosting, SSL certificates and more.

Yexa is fully flexible and provider neutral. It aims to provide a maximum level of choice to resellers, no longer tying them down to a single provider. Moreover, its modular structure will allow third parties to write custom extensions, in turn expanding choice even further and allowing resellers to provide innovative offerings to their end-users.

DNN: That sounds like a very smart and forward thinking platform design.

Yexa is described as a  software in your material and on the site, but yet the description (at least for Yexa Reseller) sounds more like it is actually a hosted service for your clients. Can you share some more details on how a reseller or registrar sets Yexa up on their own server? What is handled on the customer’s side, what’s taken care of on your end?

Jen Sale: Yexa is a software application which is installed on the clients server platform of choice. The software has been designed to run on either Windows, Linux or OS X. The databases supported are MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQLite. Minimum supported PHP is 5.1.

In most cases the client’s customer IP belongs solely to them and is stored on their servers. Only in certain situations where we distribute information on their behalf (such as WHOIS data) does customer data need to be stored on our servers.

DNN: This sounds like a good solution to an age-old problem as to who owns the customer.

From what I understand you’re aiming at a very easy wordpress-like install of the software. So does this mean you don’t need to be too technical to use your solution, but yet one can also build on it if there is technical in-house knowledge (since there is an API)?

Jen Sale: Our primary goal was to create an easy-to-use solution which has the flexibility to cater for more sophisticated requirements, and to grow with the client’s business.

DNN: Can you tell us anything about the pricing structure yet, or is this too early to ask?

Jen Sale: Yexa Registrar pricing is a tiered cost-plus model. Whereas Yexa Reseller is a tiered monthly software license, plus cost per provider unit model.

Our pricing will be extremely competitive!

DNN: Yexa is an interesting name for the product – how was the name chosen? I can see from the whois history that it was apparently bought from a Canadian Domainer – is it an abbreviation or just a short name?

Jen Sale: We chose the name because it’s short and easy to remember. No, it doesn’t abbreviate to anything.

DNN: Judging from the whois the company is a separate entity – is it wholly owned by Dark Blue Sea or is it a division of Fabulous.com?

Jen Sale: Yexa is wholly owned by Fabulous.com’s parent company, Dark Blue Sea.

DNN: You took care of the DomainDistribution Network before and Yexa is your latest project – what was and is your involvement with this new product?

Jen Sale: I’ve been closely involved with the project since its inception, and have the dual role of Product Manager and Business Development Manager. I will also continue to manage the Domain Distribution Network and ROAR.

DNN: Thank you very much Jen again for taking the time for chatting with DNN and telling us more about your new product. We’re looking forward to learning more as the work progresses.

Jen Sale: You’re very welcome Frank! Thanks for the opportunity. If anyone would like more information, please sign-up for our exclusive beta program at www.yexa.com.

The French registrar Gandi.net is giving away 55,000 Domain Names in celebration of the ICANN accredited company’s 10th birthday. The amount of promo codes given away will increase from day to day up to a total of 55,000. The longer a registrant has been with the company the more promotional codes they will receive. The coupon codes can be used by the registrant themselves or passed on to someone else. The special event is supported by a number of registrar partners and applies to the following TLDs: .be, .com, .eu, .fr, .info, .me, .mobi, .net, .tel and .uk. More information can be found on the anniversary website.

(c) 2009 DomainNameNews.com

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As of this writing, the RollingStone.com website has become a Network Solutions domain parking page.  Gawker Media first pointed out that the music industry website was no longer active.

I know what you are thinking, the domain expired and NSI took it over.  WRONGO!  The domain doesn’t expire until September 2011.

The company refers to the problem as a “glitch” .  A pretty good size glitch given that according to Compete.com the site averages over 1 million monthly unique visitors.  This seems like a pretty large mistake  for a well-known publishing company to make on their own, so we’re left wondering who dropped the ball here.

Mashable is also covering the story and a commenter pointed out that the domain may be experiencing issues with their DNS provider or Akamai.

(c) 2009 DomainNameNews.com

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Earlier this month the same group (the “Iranian Cyber Army” that had modified Twitter’s DNS, also modified the DNS for the Chinese search engine Baidu.com. Baidu.com has now filed suit against Register.com (according to AFP) seeking damages for the interruption of the service. The group had managed to get access to the domain management account at the registrar and modified the nameserver entries for Baidu.com. Baidu stated that the DNS “was unlawfully and maliciously altered” as a result of the “gross negligence” of Register.com. After the attack, the company’s CTO, Li Yinan, resigned for personal reasons.

A number of registrars, such as Moniker and Fabulous.com are offering additional locks that can be used to prevent any changes to a domain name. Even Verisign as a registry operator has recently proposed two factor security features (approved by ICANN as a voluntary offering) based on other Verisign products and a different type of domain lock (registry-lock services, approved by ICANN) to protect the domain. However not all of these locks will protect companies from potential changes to their nameserver-entries.

(c) 2009 DomainNameNews.com

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