History

CIRA was incorporated in December 1998 and became the official .CA registry on December 1, 2000. We have a 12-person Board of Directors and three Board Advisors. The 12 Board of Directors are elected by .CA Members and three are Board Advisors with non-voting positions. The Board Advisors include CIRA’s President and CEO, a representative of the Government of Canada, and John Demco, who helped establish the .CA domain and CIRA.

Who was responsible for registering the .CA domain before CIRA?

From 1987 to November 2000, .CA domain names were assigned and registered by a .CA volunteer organization headed by John Demco, former Computing Facilities Manager for the Department of Computer Science at the University of British Columbia (UBC). UBC provided the technical and administrative resources to house and operate the registry.

The Framework for the administration of the .CA domain name system laid the foundation for the transition of the .CA registry from UBC and the creation of CIRA.

Since CIRA assumed the authority to manage the .CA registry, both the Internet and the number of .CA domain names registered have grown tremendously. We achieved 1.5 million .CA domain names in October 2010.

10 years managing the .CA registry

CIRA celebrated its 10-year anniversary managing the .CA Registry in December 2010.

In recent years, CIRA has been very active in the Canadian Internet community:

In 2008, CIRA celebrated one million .CA domains registered, an indication that CIRA is among the world’s leading ccTLD.
In 2009, CIRA’s president and CEO, Byron Holland, was appointed the vice-chairperson of the Country Code Names Supporting Organization, the body that advises the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN, the organization central to Internet governance) on issues of importance to Country Code Top-Level Domains (ccTLDs).
In October 2010, CIRA simplified the process to register and manage .CA domain names, and launched a new registry system.
Also in October 2010, CIRA achieved 1.5 million .CA domains registered.
In September 2010, CIRA announced the .CA Impact Awards, an initiative to celebrate people and organizations that use their .CA to make a difference. Details can be found at impactawards.ca.
In late 2010, CIRA began a national consultation on the future of the Internet, called the Canadian Internet Forum. This marks the first time CIRA has engaged in dialogue with Canadians about issues of Internet governance and policy. Details can be found at http://cif.cira.ca.

CIRA timeline