Afilias Limited, a provider of domain name registry services, yesterday announced that it has successfully completed the transition of registry services for .aero, the top-level domain for the aviation industry.

The company says that this transition, completed on behalf of SITA, the sponsoring organization for .aero, brings significant technical improvements to the .aero domain including faster DNS resolution, enhanced security and disaster recovery procedures, an upgraded distribution interface, and industry standardization.

The .aero domain is open for registration by all members of the aviation community including airlines and airports, pilots and crew members, air services providers, cargo and other related entities. Thousands of existing .aero domains were migrated when the transition was completed during a twelve-hour window between 15 and 16 February 2006. As of result of the migration onto Afilias' technology, the .aero registry will now operate on the world-standard Extensible Provisioning Protocol, claims SITA.

"Afilias is pleased to bring .aero into the Afilias family of customers that it services with state of the art domain registration technology that is fast, reliable and secure," said Hal Lubsen, President and CEO of Afilias. "We are looking forward to a successful partnership with SITA to improve the value, technology, distribution, and prosperity of the .aero domain."