Canadian Internet Registration Authority

Type:	Non Profit Organization
Industry:	Registry
Founded:	Canada (1998)
Headquarters:	350 Sparks Street, Suite 306 Ottawa, Ontario, K1R 7S8 Canada
Website:	http://www.cira.ca
Key People
Byron Holland, President & CEO Michael Stewart, General Counsel & Director of Policy Nancy Philip, Director, Finance & Administration David Fowler, Director, Marketing & Communications

The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) is the organization that manages the .CA domain space on behalf of all Canadians, the policies that support Canada’s Internet community and Canada’s involvement in international Internet governance. This Non Profit Organization incorporated in December 1998 and became the official .CA registry on December 1, 2000. A 15 member Board of Directors, consisting of both elected and appointed members, oversees CIRA's operations. Board members are elected annually by CIRA Members through an online process. Membership in CIRA is free, and open to anyone who holds a .CA domain.

Evolution of .ca domain

.ca is the ccTLD for Canada. Registrants of .ca domains must meet Canadian Presence Requirements as defined by the registry.

Jon Postel, operator IANA, allocated the domain name was originally to John Demco of the University of British Columbia (UBC) in 1988. During that time, the Internet was used mostly for small-time research.

The first .CA domain name was upei.ca, registered in 1988 by the University of Prince Edward Island. The administrataion of the .ca domain were carried out by Demco with with assistance of .ca committee of volunteers. The names from .ca domain were assigned without charged to the applicants.

In 1997, at the Canadian Internet community's annual conference, In 1997, at the Canadian Internet community's annual conference, discussions of reform led to the formation of the Canadian Domain.

History of CIRA

As the outcome of the the Canadian Internet community's annual conference in 1997, the CDNCC recommended that a private sector, not-for-profit corporation be set up to take over the administration of the .ca from UBC and John Demco. In late December 1998, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) was incorporated to take this function.

In a 1999 letter the Canadian Government recognized CIRA as the new administrator of the .ca domain.

On June 2000, Umbrella Agreement for the Transfer of the .ca Domain Name Registry was signed between the government, CIRA and University of British Columbia. Transition Agreement for the Transfer of the Dot-ca domain name registry was also signed between CIRA and University of British Columbia. By these agreements, CIRA has gained the complete responsibility for managing the .ca domain from further on. By then, ther were there were 86,976 .ca registrations in effect.

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.

CIRA Launched Public Board Elections in March, 2001.

In June 2003, ICANN Public Meeting in Montreal. . CIRA also hosted an event during ICANN's 2005 Annual General Meeting in Vancouver.

CIRA announced that it has surpassed one million dot-ca domain name registrations in April, 2008, .

In October, 2009 CIRA announced the launch of a test-bed initiative for DNSSEC. Officials from CIRA said, the process of implementing DNSSEC had began from early 2009 while the implementation date was set for 2010.

In October 12, 2010, CIRA released a new version of its domain name registration system and stopped accepting new registrations for third-level domains.

Services

CIRA is responsible for .ca domain, the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Canada. Until 2001, besides top level Canadian domain names (such as www.example.ca), the lower level Canadian domain names (such as www.example.bc.ca), had also been overseen by CIRA.

From October 12, 2010, CIRA has stopped registering third-level domains defined by the registry (e.g. example.ab.ca) but has announced to continue supporting the existing third-level domain names.

External links

• CIRA
• University of British Columbia