History
The meteoric rise of the .CA registry
In a little over two decades, Canada’s domain name registry has developed from a small academic service run by UBC volunteers into a mature, national not-for-profit corporation managing a critical resource on behalf of all Canadians—and has in the process emerged as a world leader in Internet governance.
- The .CA registry was created in 1987 by volunteers at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver.
- The registry was officially transferred to the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) December 1, 2000.
- The first .CA domain name, upei.ca, was registered in January 1988.
- Since then, .CA domain name usage has grown by over 20% per year.
- In April 2008, CIRA registered its millionth .CA domain.
1987–2000: The volunteer years
The dot-ca registry was started in 1987 at UBC. At the time, the Canadian Internet community was small. Individuals could not register domain names, and most .CA domains were used by government and academic communities. John Demco with the help of like-minded volunteers managed Canada’s domain name registry on their own time. During the next 13 years they registered over 100,000 domain names.
By 1997 Internet activity had increased dramatically. At its annual Internet conference that year, the Canadian Internet community decided to reform the .CA registry, to liberalize registration procedures and improve turnaround times. The conference created the Canadian Domain Names Consultative Committee, which recommended that a not-for-profit, private-sector corporation be established to run the .CA registry.
The federal government had a range of options for managing the registry, but agreed with the community’s recommendations and supported the development of a not-for-profit corporation to manage the domain name resource on behalf of all Canadians.
The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) was incorporated in December 1998. Over the next two years, CIRA laid the foundation for taking over the registry—hiring permanent staff, developing policies and procedures, and building the system to house the growing registry.
2000–2009: CIRA takes charge
By November 8, 2000, when CIRA’s new rules for the .CA registry took effect, UBC had registered over 60,000 .CA domain names. During the “sunrise” period—between November 8 and December 1, when UBC officially handed over the registry—80,000 new .CA domain names were registered using the CIRA rules. By Dec 1, 2000 were over 140,000 active .CA domain name registrations.
Significant rule change introduced by CIRA included allowing individuals to register .CA domain names, and permitting any Registrant to register a domain name at the ‘.CA’ level.
CIRA officially opened its offices in Ottawa, Ontario on May 2, 2001. CIRA Members (CIRA Registrants with at least one active .ca domain name) voted in the first Board of Directors election in June 2001. The first CIRA Annual General Meeting was held in Toronto in December 2001. By the end of 2001, the registry contained 270,655 .CA domain names. The number of registrations continued to increase dramatically in the following years. By April 2008, CIRA celebrated the millionth .CA domain.
Since its incorporation in 1998, CIRA has taken on policy and governance issues that affect the Internet in Canada and around the world. For instance, one of its core policies reserves the names of municipalities for municipal use. This policy is helping Canadian cities to develop online services and resources for their citizens.
As an active participant in the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), CIRA is building Canada’s reputation and expanding its international leadership role in the governance of the Internet. In June 2003, CIRA played host to an ICANN Public Meeting in Montreal. CIRA also hosted an event during ICANNs 2005 Annual General Meeting in Vancouver.
