Directory >> Registries >> Legacy Registries
The American company Verisign, with among its main investors finance magnate Warren Buffet, holds a central position in the domain name sector as it is the registry for the .COM and .NET extensions. Verisign also maintains and distributes the root zone file on behalf of IANA and manages the root zone's DNSSEC key signing.
The other major historical registries are all American. They include Public Interest Registry for dot ORG, NGO and ONG, Identity Digital (formerly Affilias) for INFO, PRO, and MOBI, and Godaddy Registry (formerly Neustar) for BIZ. Except for Public Interest Registry, these registries also historically provided technical operator services on behalf of other TLDs, especially for countries and territories lacking the necessary resources or choosing not to do so.
The creation of more than twelve hundred nTLDs starting in 2014 has provided significant opportunities for these registries, becoming technical operators for nTLDs.