Looking back at the past 2022 year, it can be considered very productive, interesting, and eventful for our national domain .UZ.

It is worth noting that the 2021 year was especially important for the .UZ domain. On April 29 , 2021, the introduction of DNSSEC technology was announced - the technology of protected domain names for the .UZ domain zone, the signature of the root servers of the .UZ zone was organized. Just shortly after, in February 2022, the 81st conference of members of the Asia Pacific Top Level Domain Association was held in the United Arab Emirates (Dubai), at which the specialists of the UZINFOCOM Single Integrator took an active part and presented the DNSSEC project, which was highly appreciated by the international community.

Other events were the .UZ domain's birthday and the launch of the ccTLD.uz mobile application. On April 29, 1995, the .UZ top-level domain came into being. This date is considered the date of birth of our national segment of the World Wide Web – Uznet. Since March 2003, UZINFOCOM Single Integrator has been the Administrator of the national domain .UZ. The right to administer the national domain was granted in accordance with an agreement signed with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers - an international non-profit organization regulating issues related to domain names). Domain registration services in the .UZ zone are provided by 27 organizations. In 2022 the .UZ domain zone turned 27 years old. In honor of the 27th anniversary of the .UZ domain, UZINFOCOM Single Integrator presented its users a convenient mobile application named "ccTLD.uz " as a gift, which helps track the expiration of one’s domain name and provides other useful tools.

The introduction of a modern protocol for data exchange RDAP (Registration Data Access Protocol) by the specialists of UZINFOCOM Single Integrator was another considerable occasion. The RDAP protocol was tested for the .UZ domain zone and was approved by ICANN. It provides registration data, similarly to WHOIS, however, its implementation will alter and standardize access to data and the format of responses to requests. In short, RDAP is the successor protocol to the very longstanding WHOIS protocol.

On August 8, 2022, a beta version of the Xinux operating system based on the Linux kernel was introduced. This release is made publicly available in the UZINFOCOM public repositories for the Open Source community. Currently, this product is distributed under the GPL-3.0 license (free of charge)- this release can be downloaded, installed on a computer as an operating system, and used in combination with various programs. Taking into the account the ambitious plans for this project, the specialists of the UZINFOCOM Single Integrator keep on working on the Xinux operating system.

It is notable that 2022 was extremely full of international conferences and IT forums.

The international company RIPE NCC and UZINFOCOM Single Integrator organized the RIPE NCC Day forum in Tashkent, which took place on September 22-23. The conference participants got acquainted with the activities of RIPE NCC, listened to a presentation on the state of the Internet in Uzbekistan and its prospects, and also discussed issues of technical cooperation. During the conference, our team presented the DNSSEC project for the end user and the Xinux operating system. The international conference with the participation of world-class experts ended.

The RIPE NCC International Conference was followed by the 15th International Conference of Administrators and Registrars of National Top-level Domains of the CIS countries, Central and Eastern Europe, which was held online (TLDCON 2022). The conference was attended by 117 registered participants of industry specialists from 9 countries (Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Serbia, and countries of the European Union), including representatives of international and regional industry organizations. Experts from international organizations, national registries, and registrar companies exchanged news and talked about the most important trends, events, and plans for the future in a tour de table format.

One of the large-scale forums, Digital Bridge 2022 IT forum was held in Astana (Kazakhstan). The delegation of Uzbekistan took part in presentations and an exhibition along with a number of other IT solutions and startups during it. In general, the forum was attended by about 25 thousand guests, over 300 IT companies, 200 speakers from 15 countries, 150 venture and private investors. Several large-scale events were held within the forum: 49 panel sessions, an exhibition of technoparks and IT schools, an alley of IT startups, an IT job fair, Astana Hub Battle, VR, GameDev, and various thematic sessions.

On October 24-27, the annual ICTWEEK 2022 conference was held in Samarkand, which was attended by employees of the ICT sector of the republic, as well as guests from CIS countries and Europe. Within the ICT week, a summit and a forum were organized, as well as an exhibition, which also contained presentations of UZINFOCOM Single Integrator on its developments. During the summit, the CEO of our organization, Emil Gimranov, had a conversation with the Director of Global Stakeholder Engagement at ICANN, Andrea Beccali, during which issues of ongoing cooperation were discussed. MyID, DNSSEC, the Xinux operating system, “Muxlisa” voice assistant, and other UZINFOCOM projects were presented at the exhibition.

On November 16-17, the first Central Asia Peering and Interconnection Forum was held in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Experts from all over the world spoke at this forum sharing about their achievements in network security, provision of IT services, etc. Specialists of UZINFOCOM Single Integrator presented the DNSSEC project for end users.

It is nice to highlight a good indicator of the growth in the number of the domain names of 12 100 domains this year.

Thus, the overall number of domains in the .UZ zone has reached 112 000.

According to the statistics, 55% of the domain owners are legal entities and the other 45% are individuals. 95% of the domains are registered for residents of the republic, 5% for non-residents.

For reference.

.UZ domain administration takes measures on decentralization and improvement of the quality of provision of the services for registration and support for domain names, carries out a large-scale work to stimulate the creation and improvement of information resources in the national segment of the Internet.

Registration, administering, and use of the domain names in the .UZ domain is regulated by the "Regulation on the procedure for registration and use of domain names in the .UZ domain", which was registered by the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Uzbekistan №1830. The document establishes the procedure for registration and use of the domain names in the .UZ domain, and also regulates the relationship of persons whose activities directly affect the domain names in the .UZ domain, provides reliable protection against illegal actions and effective regulation of the .UZ domain.

The main focus of the .UZ domain administration is the technical support for DNS servers of the .UZ domains, which are located at different points on provider networks, including abroad, for high-quality domain name resolution for the .UZ zone, maintenance of services for convenient control over the period of registration of the domain names, creating a competitive environment in the market, and improvement of the quality of services provided for domain name registration, as well as interaction with international organizations such as ICANN, IANA, APTLD, RIPE NCC, etc. on the issues of policies and activities of domain names in the global community.

.UZ domain administration congratulates you on the most fascinating holiday - New Year! May the upcoming 2023 year be a worthy beginning for you in the best, bold, and successful projects. We wish you the brightest emotions and improvements with a stable and high-quality Internet!