The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) is the organization that manages the.caccTLD.[1] In 1997, at the Canadian Internet Community's annual conference, discussions led to the formation of CIRA.[2]This non-profit organization was created in 1998 and became the official .caregistry on December 1, 2000.[3]
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.
In January 2013, CIRA began offering registration in French, fully catering to both the nation's official languages. CIRA noted that implementing French-language characters is a more challenging and complex process than it may appear to be. For example, the domain "préside.ca" could have 62 different spelling variations depending on the choice of characters used. Therefore, it was important for CIRA to develop a number of policies to simplify the procedure. Consequently, CIRA created a bundling policy that removes the necessity to register every special-character variant of an existing .CA domain.[4]
CIRA’s Fury Registry Platform is aTLD management platform with the features and functionality designed for the modernTLD business. Fury features a modern interface with roles-based access that provides flexibility in pricing, promotion, and domain management to help operators run their business and grow their registry. Released in 2016, Fury is the current platform of choice for .CA, .KIWI, .MLS and .SX.
- 1998: At the closing of the the Canadian Internet community's annual conference in 1997, theCDNCC recommends that a private sector, non-profit corporation be set up to take over the administration of the .ca from UBC andJohn Demco.[5] In late December 1998, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) is created for this take-over.
- 1999: In a letter, the Canadian Government recognizes CIRA as the new administrator of the .ca domain.[6]
- 2000 June: The Umbrella Agreement for the Transfer of the .ca Domain Name Registry is signed between the Canadian government, CIRA, and the University of British Columbia. A Transition Agreement for the Transfer of the .ca Domain Name Registry is also signed between CIRA and the University of British Columbia. Through these agreements, CIRA gains complete responsibility for managing the .ca domain from then on.[7]
- 2000: There are 86,976 .ca registrations in effect.
- 2001: Up until this year, CIRA also oversees third-level Canadian domain names (such as www.example.bc.ca), in addition to the standardccTLD (ie: www.example.ca).
- 2001 March: CIRA launches Public Board Elections.[8]
- 2001 May: CIRA officially opens its offices in Ottawa, Ontario on May 2.
- 2001 June: CIRA Members (CIRA Registrants with at least one active .ca domain name) vote in the first Board of Directors election.
- 2001 December: The first CIRA Annual General Meeting is held in Toronto. By the end of the year, the registry manages 270,655 .ca domain names.[9]
- 2003 June:ICANN holds a public meeting in Montreal.[10]
- 2005 December: CIRA hosts an event duringICANN's 2005 Annual General Meeting in Vancouver.
- 2008 April: CIRA announces that it has surpassed one million .ca domain name registrations.[11]
- 2009 October: CIRA announces the launch of a test-bed initiative forDNSSEC.[12] Officials from CIRA say the process of implementingDNSSEC had begun in early 2009, while the implementation date was set for 2010.
- 2010: CIRA releases a new version of its domain name registration system and stops accepting new registrations forthird-level domains,[13] but promises to continue supporting existing third-level domain names. It also achieves achieves 1.5 million .ca domains registered.[14]
- 2010: Late in the year, CIRA begins a national consultation on the future of the Internet, called the Canadian Internet Forum; it is the first time CIRA engages in dialogue with Canadians about issues of Internet governance and policy.[14]
- 2012: CIRA celebrates anniversary and launches Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs).
- 2014: CIRA announces the Community Investment Program (CIP).
- 2015 May: CIRA launches theInternet Performance Test (IPT).
- 2015 October: CIRA introducesD-Zone Anycast DNS services (D-Zone).
- 2016 June: CIRA announces it will deliver IIS (.SE) a complete white-labelled Anycast solution based on it'sD-Zone service.
- 2016 July: CIRA announces it is now offering BackendRegistry Services togTLDs andccTLDs around the world.
- 2016 September: The .ca registry hits 2.5 million registered domain names.
- 2016 October: The firstgTLD customer .KIWI goes live on theFURY Registry Platform.
- 2017 November: The firstccTLD customer .SX goes live on theFURY Registry Platform.
- 2019 February: The second and largestccTLD customer .CA goes live on theFURY Registry Platform.
- 2019 March: The secondgTLD customer .MLS goes live on theFURY Registry Platform.
- 2020 November: The thirdccTLD customer .IE goes live on theFURY Registry Platform.
- 2023 October: CIRA andStichting Internet Domeinregistratie Nederland (SIDN), registries of the Canadian.ca domain and the Dutch.nl domain respectively, announced the formation of a new partnership to collaboratively develop, promote and support the current CIRA Registry Platform. The code base and intellectual property of the product, internally known at CIRA as Fury, will be transferred to a jointly owned and managed corporation based in Canada.[15]
CIRA Canadian Shield is a public DNS resolver, which means it connects its users to the websites they're trying to visit and double-checks to see if they'reMalicious Domains; if they are, the service stops the user from visiting them. The service protects users frommalware andphishing with the samethreat feed data as the CIRA DNS Firewall, using AI fromAkamai to analyze billions of daily DNS queries globally.[16]
@CIRANEWS