.SU (domain)

Number of domains

As of September 1, 2010, 88,000 domains were registered in the SU zone. It is inhabited by citizens of Russia and other CIS countries, as well as Europe, America, Canada, Australia, Israel and other countries.

As of September 2012, there are about 108 thousand registrations in the zone. SU crossed the 100 thousand name mark in November 2011.

In the SU domain, unlike other Russian zones of RU and the Russian Federation, DNSSEC technology has already been introduced. In addition, SU supports hundreds of national languages. IDN registration was opened in the domain in 2008, and now about 14 thousand multilingual names are registered in it.

Despite the "multinational nature," SU is still primarily the Russian domain: 95.4% of the names in it are registered by the inhabitants of our country. The remaining domains are administered by users from Ukraine (1%), the USA (0.6%), Belarus (0.4%) and other countries. If we consider in more detail the geography of Russian SU owners, then Moscow (40.8%), the Moscow region (8.8%) and St. Petersburg (7.2%) will be the expected leaders. More than 1% of registrations in the Krasnodar and Perm territories, Sverdlovsk, Novosibirsk, Voronezh, Volgograd, Chelyabinsk, Yaroslavl regions.

History

On September 19, 1990, an.SU top-level domain was registered in the InterNIC database for use in the USSR. This was Russia's first step into the World Wide Web and marked the beginning of the domestic Internet. By the time the RU domain appeared in April 1994, several thousand domains were registered in the SU zone. With the advent of the.RU domain in 1994, the registration of.SU domains was suspended, and only in 2002 the new administrator of the Internet Development Fund zone resumed registration.

It so happened that the domain was actually delegated not to a state called the USSR, which was already practically falling apart, but to the Internet community that was emerging in this territory. Thus, a paradox arose: the ISO code of an unconditionally authoritarian state became both a symbol of openness and democratic change.

In its original form, it was a domain "sharpened" under e-mail, for which it was given a geographical structure. Ideally, it could look something like this: 'name @ lodge.houseCity.SU'. That is, the mass and diversity in the registration of second-level domains in SU was initially not expected at all - mainly domains corresponding to the names of cities, organizations, educational institutions were registered. Accordingly, the development of the zone went on at hierarchical levels, starting from the 3rd. Therefore, after the formal "freezing" of the domain in 1994, which occurred in order to activate the nascent RU zone, nothing changed for the SU domain - it continued to live and work, however, without development at the second level.

By the time it was decided to open domain registration in the SU zone at the second level, it had several tens of thousands of servers of various types and websites using third-level domain names and higher (which is more than in domain zones of some European countries).

For 10 years, the pioneers of information communications, Relcom and Demos, have been involved in the administration and support of the SU domain. In 2000, they became the founders of the Internet Development Fund - the administrator of the SU zone. For 10 years, technical support to the SU zone was provided by the Russian Research Institute of Public Networks (RosNIIROS).

2006

In 2006, the international organization ICANN considered closing the domain, but after considering this issue. SU received the status of exclusively reserved, which guarantees its preservation.

2010

On August 1, 2010, technical support functions were transferred to the Technical Center. Internet The registrars of the SU domain are 13 companies with a good reputation in the domain name market.

According to the statistical service Stat.reg.ru, the total number of domains registered in.SU exceeds 97.4 thousand, more than 80% of registered domains are delegated. The number of registered IDN domains (domain names containing symbols of the national alphabet) is 13.6 thousand, two-character - 1.5 thousand, three-character - 9 thousand, numerical - more than 700. More than 75% of domains in the.SU zone are registered by individuals.

2011

The.SU domain shows stable growth and development: in 2011, the increase in the number of registered domain names amounted to more than 5.5 thousand. There is a trend of rejuvenation of the domain zone: more than 50% of registered domains are domains up to 2 years old. This indicates a revival of interest in the.SU domain, and not only among Russian Internet users, but also Internet users of post-Soviet countries. Among the advantages of the national domain. SU, market experts note a large number of interesting free domain names, the ability to register IDN domains, as well as short two-character domains, the registration of which was opened in July 2011. An interesting feature of the domain zone is the ability to register single-character IDN domains, such as.su, o.su. The longest domain registered is 0--gde-kupit-domen-deshevo--ru--su--com--net--org--info--me--tv.su, the longest IDN domain is международная-конференция-школьная-медиация.su, the longest digital domain is 1010011010.su.

2015: Quarter century to the.SU domain

On September 21, 2015, a round table was held dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the.SU domain and the development of the Internet in the Russian Federation. On September 19, 1990, the.SU top-level domain was registered in the InterNIC database. This day is the official date of birth of the Russian Internet^[1].

2020: The rights to the.su domain passed from the Free Russian Federation to Roskomnadzor

In October 2020, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin signed a decree appointing Roskomnadzor as the founder of the Russian Research Institute for the Development of Public Networks (owns the rights to the USSR domain zone.su) on behalf of Russia. Representatives of Russia in the governing bodies of RosNIIROS will be appointed by Roskomnadzor. Read more here.

Coat of arms of the USSR, 2013

During the event, issues related to the past and present of the Internet in the post-Soviet space, the role of national and common top-level domains in the development of the Network, state regulation of the Internet and interaction between business, the state and the general Internet community, problems of representing national and language communities on the Network, directions of further technological and social development of the worldwide network were discussed.

The discussion was attended by: Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Internet Development Fund Aleksei Soldatov, General Director of the Internet Technical Center Alexei Platonov, Chairman of the Union of Internet Operators Marat Guriev, Director of the Regional Public Center for Internet Technologies (ROCIT) Sergey Grebennikov and Arkady Kremer, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Documentary Telecommunication Association.

The founders of the "Coordination Center for the National Domain of the Internet" sent a letter to the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media of the Russian Federation with a proposal for strategic cooperation.

.SU domain was registered by the Soviet UNIX user association and continues to develop as a territorial domain, unify and give freedom of expression and implementation for users in vast expanses from the Baltic countries to the Pacific Ocean. The Internet Development Fund uses this potential to implement socially significant, educational and research projects aimed at increasing the competence of Russian Internet users, "said Aleksei Soldatov, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Internet Development Fund.

domain for me is primarily people. After all,.SU was not delegated to the state, which practically did not exist at that moment, but to the user community, "said Alexey Platonov, General Director of the Internet Technical Center. - I am especially pleased that the domain continues to work and develop. Our technical team has been supporting it since almost the moment of delegation, and there has been no major registration or DNS failure. "

. "SU turned out to be unique, because few domains are allowed to exist and delight users after the corresponding country has ceased to exist. I believe that this is a sign of recognition of Russian specialists and the Internet community at the world level, "says Arkady Kremer, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Documentary Telecommunications Association.

"More than 118,000 domain names are currently registered in the.SU domain. The domain is in demand among citizens, Russia in the CIS space, as well as Europe USA other countries. Both the Russian and the international Internet community have long perceived it as an integral part of the Russian and international Internet, - said the Sergey Grebennikov director. - ROCIT - Regional Public Center for Internet Technologies It was thanks to the efforts of users that.SU received "eternal life" - the status of exclusively reserved. This was largely facilitated by the domain's support for technologies that allow registering domain names not only in the Latin alphabet familiar to the digital environment, but also in Cyrillic, Greek, Georgian, Armenian and many other alphabets. "

"The development of information technologies has a physical nature: the processes of complicating the system and the interconnections of its components are constantly ongoing, so the development of the Internet cannot be stopped. The Internet in Russia has huge potential, and I hope that this locomotive will be able to bring us to a new stage of economic growth, "said Marat Guriev, Chairman of the Union of Internet Operators

2022

Government agencies will use only Russian domain zones

On November 2, 2022, a decree of the Government of Russia was published, according to which, from December 1, 2022, all e-mail addresses that are used by state and local authorities must be created using domain names and network addresses in the Russian national domain zone. Read more here.

Development plans

The key issue for the further development of the domain is its positioning. Apparently, the principle of territoriality ("eurasia") and multilingualism comes closest to its historical essence. That is why the SU domain has already implemented the technology IDN and registered about thirteen and a half thousand domains in the languages ​ ​ of peoples based on the Cyrillic alphabet, as well as in the languages ​ ​ of Greek, Georgian, Armenian, Hebrew, etc.

Currently, the "ideological" tension around the SU domain has subsided, the corresponding ISO code is reserved indefinitely and you can safely think about the positioning of the domain and its development program. And what I'm sure about is that the potential of this SUper domain is far from exhausted, you just need to work well on it, and I think that new approaches and ideas will be found in the near future. I sincerely wish the Internet Development Fund great success in this matter. " says Alexey Platonov, director of RosNIIROS.

• Full.SU Domain Statistics: http://stat.reg.ru/?tld=su

Notes