Ram Mohan, EVP & CTO of Afilias met with the Director General of CNNIC, Mr. Mao WeiAfilias, a global provider of Internet infrastructure services, today announced that it has joined the Chinese Domain Name Consortium (CDNC). Afilias will work with the CDNC to coordinate and collaborate with other registries to reach Chinese language Internet users with Internationalized Domain Name technology. Afilias is a registry services provider to nearly 15 million domain names, across 15 top-level domains (TLDs).

“The importance of the Chinese domain name market cannot be understated,” said Mr. Ram Mohan, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer. “With more Chinese language Internet users than the entire population of the US, and the availability of domain names in the Chinese language using Internationalized Domain Name technology, China is a high priority market for Afilias.”

“The accession of Afilias has strengthened CDNC. It is a great showcase of the increasing interest and influence towards Web addressing in Chinese characters, particularly given that ICANN is planning to launch its new policies on new TLD and IDN applications,” said Professor Qian Hualin, the Co-Chairman of CDNC.

CDNC was established in Beijing by four Network Information Centers (NIC) in the Chinese speaking community—CNNIC, TWNIC, HKIRC and MONIC in 2000. Its aim is to harmonize, promote and self-regulate registry operations and services of Chinese domain names. Members of CDNC recently revised their Articles of Association in June 2009 to make the organization more accessible and collaborative with the international Internet community, and expand membership to other registries.

Professor Shian-Shyong Tseng, Co-Chairman of CDNC emphasized that “CDNC welcomes Afilias to the CDNC and looks forward to working closely to further the growth of Chinese Domain Names.”

Mr. Mohan noted that “Membership in CDNC will provide Afilias with an excellent platform to exchange ideas and to initiate collaboration with other registries. We look forward to discussing issues such as administration standards for Chinese domain names, variant management at the second and top level, 3-character domains, as well as DNS security issues like spam, phishing and botnets.”

Mr. Mohan visited the Secretariat of CDNC and CNNIC on Monday, August 3rd, 2009 to deliver briefing reports on relevant DNS security and IDN technology developments. During his visit, Mr. Mohan commended CNNIC for its leadership in Chinese domain name promotion and development, as well as its remarkable achievements in DNS security and its high-performance SLA. The members of CDNC, DotAsia’s CEO Mr. Edmon Chung and Vice President Mr. Ching Chiao, were also among the delegates of this visit.