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Having jumped the one million domains hurdle, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) now plans to campaign on the strength of a dot-ca address in a bid to boost market share in Canada, according to the Authority's president.

When Calgary-based lawyer Brent Krause registered www.krauslaw.ca on April 13, he tipped the dot-ca registry over the one million domain mark.

The lawyer has a few dot-ca sites, but had no idea he was going to hold the one-millionth Canadian-specific domain name.

“As a small business operator, he got considerable publicity around this,” says Byron Holland, CIRA president. Krause also received a plaque and 10 free years of domain registry for creating the landmark site.

Celebrating the occasion at a gala in Ottawa yesterday, CIRA is also using the event as the start of a wider effort to raise awareness of the benefits of holding a dot-ca Web site. Currently ranked as the 17th largest Internet domain registry, the authority hopes to make some ground on more popular domains such as dot-com.

“This organization grew up providing a great technical function,” Holland says. “The next phase in our path is to help spread this message about why this is a great registry with some real benefits.”

Two national newspapers featured full-page ads about the one-millionth domain registry, he adds. CIRA will work with its channel partners to help spread the message, starting with the registrars that use the service.

As an additional security feature, the Authority maintains all domain name information so if a registrar crashes, the information can still be retrieved from CIRA's backup servers, Holland says.

Some more education from CIRA isn't a bad idea, according to Web designer Matt Wiebe. The St. Stephen, New Brunswick-based student registered www.somadesign.ca back in December, but he wasn't aware of CIRA's extra security feature.

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