News
Verisign Selected to Operate .gov Domain Name Registry
February 2011 by Marc Jacob
Verisign, Inc., the trusted provider of Internet infrastructure services for the networked world, has been selected by the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) to operate the nation’s mission-critical domain name registry for .gov.
Following a competitive RFP and evaluation process, the GSA granted Verisign the authority to provide designated domain name registration services to federal, state and local governments operating sites under the .gov and fed.us domain names. The services include processing requests, help desk assistance and operation of the authoritative .gov Domain Name System (DNS) servers. Verisign also will support the implementation of DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC) on .gov and fed.us.
From federal organizations like Congress and the Federal Bureau of Investigations to state and county governments and small municipalities, .gov is the registry of choice for the vast majority of government domains. In addition, agencies such as the U.S. Forest Service (fs.fed.us) and U.S. District Court in New Mexico (nmcourt.fed.us) rely on the fed.us registry to reliably serve many more sites and the citizens who visit them.
In making its selection, the GSA determined Verisign readily addressed all of the items it identified as essential for operating the .gov domain name registry.
These included:
• Designing and operating a registry infrastructure capable of scaling to meet the needs of the GSA, while maintaining best-in-class reliability and accessibility
• Operating a network infrastructure that supports both Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) and Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6)
• Full support of DNSSEC
• Unmatched security and stability
