Guides
Three one-page references: how the domain name system came to be arranged the way it is, how it is organised today, and how a lookup actually resolves. Useful if the rest of this site assumes background you would rather not have to assemble from the methodology page.
A short history of domain names
PDF · one page · 326 KB
How we got from one HOSTS.TXT file at SRI in 1971 to roughly 1,450 TLDs today: Mockapetris designing DNS, the first six gTLDs in 1985, the Network Solutions monopoly and the registrar competition that ended it, ICANN taking over coordination, and the 2012 round that created most of the TLDs this site counts. Also tracks what a .com has cost at each step.
How domain registration works
PDF · one page · 363 KB
Who runs the namespace and who sells the names: ICANN and IANA at the root, registries running each TLD, registrars selling into them, and the registrant at the end holding a renewable right rather than a freehold. Follows the money through each hop, sets gTLDs against ccTLDs, and traces a domain from available through redemption to dropped.
How DNS works
PDF · one page · 455 KB
What happens between typing a name and reaching a server: the stub resolver, the recursive resolver, the root, the TLD nameservers and the authoritative ones. Covers the common record types, why changes are not instant, the DNSSEC chain of trust, and the handful of things that actually go wrong.
The same subjects, as live data
The guides are explanatory and their figures are approximate and dated. Where this site covers the same ground it does so from the current data, updated daily:
- Registries and backends
- Who operates each TLD commercially, and which technical platform actually runs it — the distinction the registration guide draws between a registry and its back-end provider. ICANN publishes no TLD-to-backend mapping, so that one is inferred; the methodology says exactly how.
- Registrars and transfers
- Market share per registrar from the registries' own monthly reports, and which of them are gaining or losing domains to each other.
- DNSSEC and nameserver providers
- How much of each namespace is signed, and who answers for it — the chain of trust and the authoritative layer the DNS guide describes, counted across every zone we hold.
- Keep rates and the lifecycle
- What share of domains survive a renewal decision, and when each TLD was delegated. The registration guide's lifecycle diagram, with the numbers filled in.
Data currency. Domain counts on this page are from zone files dated and refresh daily. Registrar figures are from ICANN's monthly registry reports for June 2026, which ICANN publishes about three months in arrears; zone files contain no registrar information, so no fresher source exists. Full detail on methodology and live pipeline status.