Thirty years of Nominet Guardians of .UK

In May 1996, Nominet was founded – created due to a growing interest in the .UK domain and a need to formalise the process of registering a domain. We didn’t start the UK internet or .UK, but with only 26,000 domains registered at Nominet’s foundation, the reality was that much of society hadn’t yet gone online. The web was in its infancy and those of us with access, spent more time explaining the concept to others or discussing what the @ sign meant, rather than being online. 

Now, as Nominet turns 30, we have over 10m .UK domains under our management – with around 4,800 domains registered daily over the last year. Our role as the guardians of .UK has been made possible by our fantastic members (over 2,200) – some of whom have been with us since those earliest days.

Thanks to the success of the .UK domain, we play an important role in society.  Every time somebody reaches a UK address, we make sure they get their information in milliseconds. Today, .UK domains are used for everything from globally renowned businesses and government services to charities, side hustles and anything in between. 

We’re working 24/7 to ensure 100% uptime. Much of the hard work, like the 2 trillion DNS queries we now handle annually, or the 28m domain lookups a day are not visible – but the impact of them not working would be.  Like energy, water or communications we would all miss critical infrastructure when it isn’t there.

Our members and registrars play a crucial role in. UK’s reputation as a trusted namespace. Together, we’re working hard to keep it safe from crime and domain abuse – with well-established relationships with law enforcement agencies working alongside our members.

At Nominet, we haven’t always got everything right, but we are focused on what’s important – a healthy and growing namespace, building a safe and resilient .UK, while supporting the public sector with our DNS knowledge.

As a public benefit company – we fund projects that directly tackle the growing threat of online harms and supporting the vital internet infrastructure we all rely on, like the recently announced Nominet DNS Fund. Our support of Safer Internet Day earlier this year helped make events possible in more than half of all UK schools – promoting the conversation about responsible use of Artificial Intelligence and reaching millions of young people and their families with important online safety messages.

The rapid emergence of AI today is rather similar to our foundation in 1996 where talk of getting online and the ‘Information Superhighway’ was everywhere.  We’re seeing a growing number of .UK domains being registered to become the home of agentic bots – a way we could have never have even predicted five years ago. While this also brings new challenges, this means our work – keeping the lights on and ensuring that .UK remains a safe and trusted domain – is as important today as it was 30 years ago.

So, on our 30^th birthday – thank you to everyone who has helped build .UK and make it a success!  

Paul Fletcher, CEO of Nominet