The 19th International Conference of Administrators and Registrars of National Top-Level Domains of Eastern Europe and Central Asia TLDCON 2026 concluded in Tashkent on September 23. Over two days, participants discussed issues of domain industry regulation, cybersecurity, DNS Abuse, the application of artificial intelligence, marketing, and specialist training. The event was organized by the Coordination Center for .RU/.РФ Domains and RosNIIROS.

Within the framework of the conference, three memorandums of cooperation were signed with the administrators of the .KZ, .UZ, and .KG domain zones. The documents provide for interaction in the field of DNS protection, exchange of domain management experience, development of internationalized domain names (IDN), and conducting educational events. Changes in the Russian domain industry were also reported: since September 1, registration requires identification through ESIA, and registrar accreditation has been replaced by an official list.

Technical indicators and infrastructure changes were presented separately. In the .РФ domain, the set of allowed characters has been expanded by 26 letters, which allowed the registration of more than 2000 domains taking into account the peculiarities of the writing systems of the peoples of Russia. At RuCenter, 46.4% of administrators underwent identification through ESIA, and at Reg.ru, 30.2%. The DNS infrastructure of Russian national domains processes about 20 billion requests per day through 29 nodes in 21 cities worldwide.

A significant part of the program was devoted to special domain maintenance regimes, artificial intelligence, and DNS protection. For special domain names of government agencies, separate registration and maintenance requirements have been established. Participants also considered the use of AI for data analysis, user support, and cyber protection, while it was proposed that decisions affecting user security and rights should remain with humans. In the .SU zone, registry normalization, WHOIS updates, transfer by AuthInfo code, and Escrow and EBERO mechanisms were discussed.

In the sections on DNS Abuse and resource compromise, experts discussed the differences between malicious registration and the hacking of legitimate domains. Coordination between hosting providers, CERT/CIRT, and other relevant organizations was highlighted as one approach to response. Trusted Notifiers networks and NetBeacon recommendations for checking related domains were also discussed. Separate sessions were dedicated to domain zone marketing, premium .UZ domains, and new scenarios for using domains in AI ecosystems.