‘.com still most widely used top level Internet domain’

AMMAN — The top level domain (TLD) “.com” is still the most widely used TLD among Internet users, according to the Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Organisation (TAG-Org).

“We have been using less than 10 TLDs for many years and .com was and is still the main focus,” Charles Shaban, executive director of Abu-Ghazaleh Intellectual Property, said at the opening of the Second Middle East Domain Name System Forum on Monday. 

The Internet is expected to witness some major changes since there are many new TLDs related to industries and brands, and in various languages, such as .guru, .website, .reviews, .hotels, .shop, .rocks, Shaban added at the opening of the two-day event, hosted by TAG-Org. and co-organised by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the Internet Society.

For Internet users, the TLD is the suffix at the end of a domain name such as “.com” or “.net”.

At present, there are more than 500 TLDs and the number is expected to exceed 1,000 in the next few years, according to ICANN.

Frederic Donck, director of European Regional Bureau at the Internet Society, said the forum is an important event for both Jordan and the Middle East Region.

“DNS (Domain Name System) has become the critical way in which people get connected to sites and to services on the Internet. It is critical to Jordan’s and the region’s economy,” he said in an e-mail to The Jordan Times.

However, DNS is not secure, he noted.

“Attackers can hijack users’ queries and redirect users to other sites. And this is the reason why we need to talk security and, even more importantly, how we can increase the trust users have in the Internet.” 

“This is the Internet Society’s major concern and we are happy to discuss all of this with the many high-level experts from Jordan and the region during this critical DNS forum,” Donck added.

Experts from several countries are taking part in the forum to discuss the Internet industry in the Middle East and the business opportunities in the region.

Organisers of the event said it seeks to build bridges between interested parties in the region and international experts in the field by sharing experiences.