General · EdgepediaSeptember 17, 20268 min read

.net

.net is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) in the Domain Name System root zone. It was one of the first TLDs created when the DNS was designed in the 1980s, and it is operated under contract to ICANN by VeriSign, Inc.¹^•²^•³

Key fact	Detail
Meaning and origin	One of the TLDs established by RFC 920 (October 1984); RFC 1591 (1994) reserved it for "network providers" (NIC and NOC computers, administrative computers, and network node computers)¹^•²
Registry operator	VeriSign, Inc., sole registry operator under the .NET Registry Agreement effective 1 July 2023 through 30 June 2029³
Size	12.5 million registrations as of 30 September 2025, against 159.4 million for .com; the zone peaked at 15.0 million on 31 December 2014⁴^•⁵
Registry service fee	US$10.91 from 1 February 2024; scheduled to rise to US$12.00 effective 1 March 2027, a 9.99% increase just under the contractual 10% annual cap⁵^•⁶^•⁷
Renewal rate	76.35% over the twelve months to June 2026, above the median gTLD (68.39%) and the combined .com/.net/.org rate (73.23%)⁸
Technical role	Thin registry model; nameservers a.gtld-servers.net through m.gtld-servers.net; RDAP service at rdap.verisign.com/net/v1³^•⁸
Restrictions	Originally restricted under RFC 1591 to the computers of network providers (NIC and NOC computers, administrative computers, and network node computers); registration carries no trademark status and the registry does not adjudicate registrant disputes²

What .net is

.net is one of the original generic top-level domains. RFC 920, published in October 1984, established the initial set of top-level domains and required that they be specially authorized and registered with the NIC domain registrar.¹

History

The TLD set that became .com, .edu, .gov, .mil, .net, .org, and .arpa, with .int added later took shape in discussions on the Namedroppers mailing list during the changeover to the DNS on the Arpanet/DDN internet in 1984–1987, before the Internet became commercial after 1990.⁹ The .net zone dates to 1 January 1985 in the specialist record, with nordu.net as the first name in the zone; NSF.net, registered on 5 November 1986, was the third .net domain ever registered, and its domain record still carries that creation date.⁵^•¹⁰

RFC 1591 and the original purpose. RFC 1591 (March 1994) defined the generic TLDs as EDU, COM, NET, ORG, GOV, MIL, and INT, and stated it was extremely unlikely any other TLDs would be created. For NET it specified that the domain was "intended to hold only the computers of network providers, that is the NIC and NOC computers, the administrative computers, and the network node computers", with customers of network providers expected to hold domain names of their own outside the NET TLD.² Second-level domains in COM, EDU, ORG, NET, and GOV were registered by the Internet Registry at the InterNIC.²

Commercialization. In September 1995 the National Science Foundation allowed Network Solutions to begin charging for domain name registration services in .COM, .NET, .ORG, .EDU, and .GOV, which had been free up to that point; the change coincided with the elimination of the ban on commercial traffic across NSF-funded portions of the Internet.¹¹ Before ICANN's establishment there were eight gTLDs (.com, .org, .net, .gov, .mil, .edu, .int, and .arpa); additional gTLDs were added in 2000 and 2004.¹²

How the registry works

VeriSign, Inc. is the sole registry operator for .net under the .NET Registry Agreement with ICANN, which took effect on 1 July 2023, amended and restated the 2017 agreement (as amended 27 April 2020), and runs through 30 June 2029.³^•¹³ The 2017 agreement had been set to expire on 30 June 2023, and the renewal resulted from bilateral discussions between ICANN and VeriSign, the registry operator for both .net and .com.¹³

The TLD operates a thin registry model: the registry holds minimal registrant data, with detailed contact information kept at the registrars, and VeriSign pays ICANN a US$0.75 Registry-Level Transaction Fee per annual registration increment and for transfers.³ At the DNS level, .net is served by the shared gtld-servers.net fleet, nameservers a.gtld-servers.net through m.gtld-servers.net, with machine-readable registration data available through RDAP at rdap.verisign.com/net/v1.⁸ VeriSign has reported 29 consecutive years of 100% DNS availability for .net through mid-2026, and .net shares resolution infrastructure with .com.⁵

By the numbers

As of 30 September 2025 the .net domain name base totaled 12.5 million registrations, against 159.4 million for .com; the two TLDs together held 171.9 million names, up 0.8% from the previous quarter.⁴ Verisign ended the fourth quarter of 2025 with 173.5 million combined .com and .net registrations, a 2.6 percent increase year over year, and processed 10.7 million new .com and .net registrations in the quarter versus 9.5 million a year earlier.¹⁴ All top-level domains together closed 2025 with 386.9 million registrations, an increase of 8.4 million, or 2.2%, compared with the third quarter of 2025.¹⁵

The zone has been shrinking for a decade. It peaked at 15.0 million registrations on 31 December 2014 per Verisign's Domain Name Industry Brief and stood at about 12.5 million by 2026, where the DNIB Q2 2026 report still ranks it the fourth-largest TLD in the world.⁵^•⁷ Retention, however, has strengthened: of 10,882,579 .net domains up for renewal between July 2025 and June 2026, 8,308,848 were renewed and 2,573,731 deleted, a twelve-month keep rate of 76.35%.⁸ Verisign's own final .com and .net renewal rate for the third quarter of 2025 was 75.4%, up from 72.2% in the third quarter of 2024.¹⁴

How it compares with .com and .org

.net is roughly one-thirteenth the size of .com, which held 159.4 million names at the end of September 2025 against .net's 12.5 million.⁴ The two share an operator and, in practice, resolution infrastructure, but their pricing regimes differ: .com pricing is subject to NTIA price-cap rules, while .net pricing is set under a separate ICANN contract without that mediation.⁵ The .net registry service fee was $10.91 from February 2024; retail prices are higher, and a 2020 academic study put the average retail price for new .com names at $10–$11 with renewals at $16 or more, in a primary market (new registrations $0.4 billion plus renewals $1.7 billion, totaling $2.3 billion) comparable in size to the secondary market for domain sales ($2.1 billion).⁵^•¹⁶

On retention, .net outperforms both benchmarks: its 76.35% twelve-month keep rate exceeds the median gTLD keep rate of 68.39% and the combined .com/.net/.org rate of 73.23%.⁸ The DNIB Q2 2026 estimate put .net's quarterly renewal rate at 78.7%, the highest among the top ten gTLDs.⁷

Governance and pricing

The 2023 renewal kept .net as an unsponsored TLD under a legacy-style agreement and retained the price provision that has drawn the most comment: the registry operator may raise the maximum wholesale price by up to 10 percent per calendar year, a right in place since 2005.³^•¹³ Under the agreement as signed, the maximum total wholesale fee was US$10.67, consisting of a US$9.92 service fee and a US$0.75 ICANN fee.³

The fee has risen once under that cap, with a second increase announced for 2027. On 1 February 2024 the wholesale registry service fee rose to $10.91, a 10% increase from $9.92.⁵ On 27 August 2026 VeriSign announced a further increase, from $10.91 to $12.00 for new and renewal .net domain names, effective 1 March 2027, per its agreement with ICANN.⁶ The announced increase works out to 9.99%, just under the 10% annual cap.⁷

One premise sometimes repeated in coverage does not match the record: the most recent .net contract renewal occurred in 2023, not 2024, and the 10% price-increase provision was retained rather than removed; the February 2024 fee rise took place under the existing cap.³^•¹³

Policy, abuse and disputes

The 2023 renewal added several contractual instruments. It required compliance with the gTLD Registration Data Access Protocol (RDAP) Profile with RDAP service-level requirements, planned the sunset of WHOIS-based Registration Data Directory Services in line with the 2023 Global Amendment, and incorporated Specification 11 DNS-security commitments.¹³ A Letter of Intent amendment extended VeriSign's commitment to adopt enhanced contractual provisions addressing security threats, including the DNS-abuse amendment then open for public comment, to the .NET agreement, mirroring what was already provided for .com, and added incident-reporting requirements based on the Security and Stability Advisory Committee's SAC074.¹³

Pricing dominated the public comment period. Several commenters objected to Section 7.2(a)'s allowance for Verisign to increase the maximum wholesale price by up to 10 percent annually; ICANN noted that three pricing models exist across registry agreements and that most commenters sought elimination of the registry's price-increase right.¹³ On disputes, the founding document's position still frames the registry's role: RFC 1591 stated that registration of a domain name carries no trademark status and that the registration authority has no role in registrant disputes beyond providing contact information.²

Recent developments

The period from 2023 to 2027 shows a contract renewed, a further price increase announced for 2027 at nearly the contractual cap, and a base that shrinks while its survivors renew more reliably:

July 2023: the .NET Registry Agreement took effect for a term through 30 June 2029, adding RDAP, WHOIS-sunset, DNS-abuse, and SAC074 incident-reporting commitments.³^•¹³
February 2024: the wholesale service fee rose 10%, from $9.92 to $10.91.⁵
August 2026: VeriSign announced the rise to $12.00 effective 1 March 2027, a 9.99% increase just under the contractual cap.⁶^•⁷
Through 2026: the zone held at about 12.5 million names, well below the 15.0 million peak of end-2014, while the renewal rate climbed, from 72.2% (Q3 2024) to 75.4% (Q3 2025) on Verisign's combined .com/.net measure and to an estimated 78.7% for .net alone in Q2 2026.⁵^•⁷^•¹⁴

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Technology and the built world › Computing and digital systems › Networks and security › Networking fundamentals and architecture › Routing and addressing › Name addressing and DNS

Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 15, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026 · Last review: Oct 15, 2026

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