Reglikedomain industry desk

Name Auction Melts Sedo’s Servers — .De Domain

.De auction traffic halts auction.

Massive traffic for Sedo’s .de “pre-auction” has taken the site down. A message on the site reads:

Due to the extremely high participation in the .De Pre-Auction Sedo?s website was temporarily down. We have decided to extend the auction until 8:00 PM CET. If necessary we will extend the auction later than this time to accommodate additional bids.

Presumably that means 8:00 PM ET. Actually they mean Central European Time, but don’t be surprised if this is extended.

Bidding has been fast and furious all morning. When I checked around 10 am, Com.de was leading the pack at over $100,000. In addition to releasing one and two character .de domains, .de registry DENIC is also releasing domains that include other top level domains, such as com.de and net.de.

The last time I recall Sedo melting under traffic was during a .mobi auction in 2007. Sedo retooled following that and has avoided any meltdowns until today.

We’ll keep you posted.

Also on the wire

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