homeWelcome, sign in or click here to subscribe.login
     


 

 

Opinion


print  email to a friend  reprints add to mydjc  

September 14, 2000

Ten Fast Facts: eNIC Corp.

Fast Facts logo

eNIC Corp.

WHO:
A privately held Internet infrastructure company founded in 1997 by Brian Cartmell.

WHAT:
Registers domain names for Web sites.

WHERE:
Seattle.

Fast Fact #1: eNIC is the worldwide registry for the dot-cc top-level domain name. 

Comment: Top-level domain names are the two- or three-letter suffixes attached to Internet addresses. They represent the Internet's major streets. The rest of an address -- generally a company or organization's name or a catchy phrase -- is a second-level domain name. Second-level names are like house numbers. Registries such as eNIC ensure no two house numbers on the same street are identical.

Fast Fact #2: Dot-cc works just like dot-com, dot-net, dot-org and other more well-known suffixes.

Comment: With 10 million registrants, dot-com is the most used of the 250 existing top-level names. As a result, more and more latecomers to the dot-com craze are finding the second-level names they want have already been grabbed by other dot-coms, says Cartmell, eNIC chairman and CEO. Dot-cc offers an alternative to the dwindling supply of dot-com addresses. "Our primary (customer) base is late adapters," Cartmell says. "Dot-cc provides them with an opportunity to get the name they want." 

Fast Fact #3: Network Solutions is by far the largest registry.

Comment: The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) awarded that company worldwide registration rights to dot-com and other common top-level names.

Companies and organizations seek particular top-level domain names because the names offer a clue to a Web site's content. For example, dot-com signifies commercial sites, dot-edu indicates educational sites and dot-gov signals government sites.

Fast Fact #4: Dot-cc is a country code.

Comment: Every nation on earth has a top-level domain name known as a country code. They are among the original 250 domain names recognized by the 13 "route zone" servers that form the backbone of the Internet. Dot-cc is the country code for the Cocos Islands, an external territory of Australia located in the Indian Ocean. 

Fast Fact #5: Countries do not own the rights to their domain names.

Comment: Anyone can apply to the IANA to become the registry for an unmanaged domain name. Searching for a way to expand the pool of Internet addresses, Cartmell decided to request a country code. He chose the Cocos Islands because its tiny population of 600 people and isolated location 2,800 kilometers from the Australian mainland ensured that virtually every possible dot-cc address would be available to sell to the outside world. Plus, says Cartmell, dot-cc sounds more businesslike than the other available top-level domain names. 

Fast Fact #6: eNIC is helping the Cocos Islands create a communications infrastructure.

Comment: The assistance is not a condition for gaining the dot-cc registry. "There's no international law that says you have to do it," notes Cartmell.

It also does not mean eNIC is moving its operations there. Given the region's frequent cyclones, "that would be very dangerous," says Cartmell. Instead, helping the Cocos Islands gain Internet access and maintain its threatened phone system seemed like the right thing to do, he says. Plus it creates business opportunities. For example, since most islanders speak three languages, the Cocos Islands is the perfect place to locate an international call center, says Cartmell. 

Fast Fact #7: Cartmell once taught a business computer class while still in high school.

Comment: The instructor injured himself falling down some stairs and the principal at Ballard High School asked Cartmell to take over for the rest of the quarter. A self-taught computer whiz, Cartmell went to work right out of high school, forging a career as a telecommunications consultant. "At that time, there weren't a lot of people with all the expertise I had," he says.

Fast Fact #8: Cartmell launched eNIC out of his Ballard home.

Comment: "I started it out of the second-floor bedroom of my house and now we're on the 44th floor of the Wells Fargo Building," he says. Cartmell has gone from zero employees and zero registered domain names to 44 employees and 350,000 registered names. He expects to hit the million name mark sometime next year.

Fast Fact #9: eNIC is the first registry to offer domain names in Asian characters.

Comments: Until now, domain names could be rendered only in English characters. However, through a partnership with i-DNS.net, eNIC is offering dot-cc domain names in Chinese, Japanese, Korean and other Asian languages. A popular Chinese singer/actor, Andy Lau, is helping eNIC with its marketing, says Cartmell. More important, eNIC recently received a $25 million strategic funding commitment from MOL.com Berhad, a leading Internet company in Malaysia. The plan is to make dot-cc a household brand in Asia, just as dot-com is in the U.S.

Fast Fact #10: eNIC charges $100 every two years to register a dot-cc address.

Comment: "We've been cash-flow positive since day one," says Cartmell, the company's primary shareholder. Like its giant rival, Network Solutions, eNIC may eventually conduct an IPO, says Cartmell.



Previous columns:



Email or user name:
Password:
 
Forgot password? Click here.