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Your Internet domain name is the most important component of your business's online identity. Your domain offers easily remembered access to your company's Web site and, of course, it's at the heart of your company's e-mail addresses.

If you're like most people, you don't think much about your domain name once you've acquired one you like--except when things go wrong. Unfortunately, it's possible to lose your carefully chosen domain name if you don't act to safeguard it.

Choosing a Domain Registrar

From 1992 to 1999, Network Solutions enjoyed a monopoly on registrations for .com, the top-level domain that's most popular for business use. Then ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the organization responsible for global coordination of Internet identifiers, opened up domain registration to competition. There are now more than 880 ICANN-authorized domain name registrars.

Competition has been good for domain registrants. It has helped to reduce the annual cost of domain registration; and it has increased choices for related services such as domain forwarding, which transfers a Web site's visitors to another URL.

It's easy to look at a domain registrar's Web site to determine the cost of registration, which can range up to $35 or so per year for a .com. However, it's far more difficult to assess the quality of the service you'll receive from a registrar before you sign up. You may find out about poor service only after it's too late.

Protect Your Domain Name

Here are some steps you can take to safeguard your domain name, regardless of the registrar that you sign up with.

1. Keep your domain registration contact details up-to-date, particularly your e-mail address. If your e-mail address is incorrect, you won't receive a renewal notice from your registrar. You'll notice the problem after your domain name expires, when your e-mail address and Web site URL stop working. If you act quickly, it may be possible to retrieve a recently expired domain. However, you'll pay your registrar a hefty penalty--perhaps $160 or so--for your tardiness.
2. Keep all your domain details, including expiration date and domain management account name and password, in a safe place. Don't rely solely upon your registrar's information, because it may not always be accurate. You'll need to access your domain management account to change the DNS (Domain Name System) address if you want to move to another Web host, or to obtain the authorization code if you want to switch to another domain registrar.
3. Keep Web site hosting separate from domain name registration. It's convenient to receive one bill for Internet services, but if you rely on one company to both register your domain and provide Web and e-mail hosting, it's more difficult to migrate to another service if things go bad. I recommend that you do not use the same company to host your Web site and register your domain.

Note: Many domain registrars offer a privacy or anonymity service, which can make it more difficult to transfer your domain since your ownership isn't publicly identifiable. You should weigh the value of your privacy against the cost of lack of access to your data.

Domain Registrar Meltdown

When a registrar has problems, its customers risk serious loss--witness the recent case of RegisterFly. A court battle between rival managers for control of the business exacerbated problems with the company's domain management system; many RegisterFly registrants found it impossible to renew their domains before the expiration date, even though some claim they paid for renewal--in some cases, up to four times. After the expiration dates passed, some customers lost their domain names because they were registered to someone else.

Documents filed in federal court allege that RegisterFly lost approximately 75,000 of its customers' domain names in January and early February of this year, due to the company's failure to pay fees due to registry operators--companies that manage specific top-level domains (VeriSign for .com and .net, Public Interest Registry for .org).

To prevent any more unintended domain losses, ICANN asked key players in the domain business for their cooperation in preventing RegisterFly names from becoming available for re-registration by others. After March 31, RegisterFly will no longer be able to operate as an ICANN-Accredited Registrar.

More details about RegisterFly's problems can be found on the ICANN blog. RegisterFly's home page currently displays no acknowledgement of its problems--not even an apology to its customers.

Did ICANN Act too Slowly?

ICANN started receiving a large number of complaints from RegisterFly customers in late 2005 and early 2006, but did not notify RegisterFly of its breach of the Registrar Accreditation Agreement until February 21, 2007.

Domain registrants pay about 25 cents per year per .com domain to support ICANN's operations. They deserve a far more responsive service, one that preserves the value of their investment in Internet domains. (Full disclosure: My IT consulting business resells a small number of domain registrations, but I have never worked with RegisterFly.)

I believe that ICANN must be better prepared to act as an active industry watchdog, or cede its responsibilities to an organization that is capable of that job. The integrity of the Internet demands it.

Richard Morochove is an IT consultant and writer who can be reached via e-mail.