Pre-Registration Kick-Off for .ca Domain Name Holders

[Ottawa, CANADA] Today marks the beginning of the long-anticipated
pre-transfer registration period for .ca domain holders.

All current .ca domain name holders are required to pre-register
their .ca domain name with CIRA
(Canadian Internet Registration Authority) to be included in the
new .ca registry, which will become active on or about November 1,
2000.

CIRA is a not-for-profit organization mandated to operate the .ca
top-level domain. It is responsible for setting policy, managing and
operating the .ca domain database and registering domain names.

“The transfer of the responsibility for the registry from a volunteer
organization at the University of British Columbia to the
not-for-profit CIRA is part of a long-term plan to relax current
registration rules and to streamline the registration process for
.ca domain names,” said Glen Bloom, co-chair of the CIRA Board.

The pre-registration of existing .ca domain names is necessary to
ensure that they are transitioned into the CIRA Registry before it
begins to accept new requests under the new more liberal rules.

To pre-register, .ca domain name holders must submit their requests
to a CIRA-certified registrar. They have until the operational
transfer date (OTD), on or about November 1, 2000, to do so.

The list of certified registrars is available on CIRA’s Web site.

CIRA and its registrars are prepared for a high volume of requests, as
there are more than 90,000 .ca domain names in the current registry.

CIRA anticipates that all existing registrants will have pre-registered
their domain names before the OTD.

Only those names that have been pre-registered in the CIRA Registry
will continue to be active after that date, although there is a
30-day grace period to handle exceptions.