The land rush (a term describing the limited initial period for the registration of attractive internet domains) set off precisely at noon on March 10, back in 2008, and at the same time.yu domain names registration were stopped”, Serbian National Internet Domain Registry Foundation (RNIDS) advisor Marina Tasić remembers, having managed the transition process from .yu to .rs at the time. A total of 7000 .rs domain names were registered on that first day.
“The land rush was completed quickly and successfully, in just 45 minutes, and we proceeded with standard .rs domain name registration. Naturally, the domain names registered on .yu were reserved in the .rs domain space over the next six months, giving their registrants plenty of time to use their precedence on registration. Domains .yu were subsequently active for some time, however, the transition was finalized swiftly, in about a year, though this normally takes five years”, Marina Tasić explained.
There were more than 40,000 domains in the .yu domain space. About half of those were, in fact, active since the names were “erased” based solely on the explicit request of the registrant. After the finalization of the transition period, the right to reregistration from .yu to .rs was exercised for 19,372 domain names.
“We worked enthusiastically, without funding, in exceptionally challenging times for the country on an international level. It wasn’t until the start of registration that we started receiving funding, primarily for the coverage of transition generated expenses, and later for “elevating” the operation of the Registry as well", Mirjana Tasić explained.
.rs 15 years on
Domain .rs welcomes its 15th birthday with more than 130,000 registered domain names. Today, it represents the first pick for internet business customers in Serbia seeing as how the latest research indicates that more than 65% of the companies use the domain .rs for their website address.
“Throughout their 15-year operation, RNIDS was dedicated to continuous evolution of their quality of service, process automatization, and construction of stable infrastructure crucial for Serbia’s internet operation. We upgraded our technical performance constantly, worked on increasing the safety level of national domains through the introduction of three types of domain locking and DNSSEC digital signature. We introduced a model for resolving domain disputes taking after the leading global practices, and expanded the network of authorized registries, so that registrants of national domains would not only have an extended choice of service providers, but also the necessary local support”, the RNDIS director Dejan Đukić explained.
It's been almost five years since .rs became multilingual, i.e., IDN (internationalized domain name), enabling registration with the use of the extended set of Latin characters from national minority languages used in Serbia.
“We find ourselves facing new challenges, new upgrade cycles, the alignment with cutting-edge technologies, market trends, and all for the benefit national internet domain registrants”, Đukić concludes.