Web infrastructure services provider VeriSign has reported a 26 per cent increase in annual domain name registrations, as demand for top-level domains (TLDs) remains robust.

In its Q108 Domain Name Industry Report, VeriSign said 14 million new domain names were registered in the first quarter of 2008, taking the total to 162 million. That is a 6 per cent increase on the previous quarter and up 26 per cent year on year.

VeriSign said that the total base of country code top level domains (ccTLDs) had hit 63 million, increasing year on year by 33 per cent and nine per cent quarter on quarter.

The .com suffix has the most registrations, followed by .de, .cn, .net, .uk and .org.

The growth in domain name registrations was being driven by the increasing numbers of Internet users in areas such as India and China, VeriSign noted.

"Rapidly emerging regions like India underscore the importance of ensuring that the Internet infrastructure is able to serve every corner of the world,” said Raynor Dahlquist, senior vice president of naming services at VeriSign in a statement.

VeriSign is currently implementing Project Titan, an initiative designed to increase local domain name service (DNS) infrastructure.

VeriSign CTO Ken Silva said that this would help reduce bandwidth usage by caching content closer to users, and also allow VeriSign to better deal with region-specific cyber attacks.