·                                 History of register domain

Domain name registrar market share, 2002-09.^{[citation needed]}

The function ofdomain name registryoperator, it was also the sole registrar for these domains. However, several companies had developed independent registrar services. One such company, NetNames, developed in 1996 the concept of a standalone commercial domain name registration service to sell to the public domain registration and other associated services. This effectively created the retail model into the industry and assigning a wholesale role to the registries. NSI assimilated this model, which ultimately led to the separation of registry and registrar functions.

In October 1998, following pressure from the growing domain name registration business and other interested parties, NSI's agreement with the United States Department of Commerce was amended. This amendment required the creation .Independent Domain RegistrierѶ istics and rankings by associating name servers and IP addresses with registrarsrather than using registrars listed in Whois information. It appears that this different basis of measurement, along with the smaller number of TLDs they track, cause their Total Domain numbers to be lower than other sites.
Yearly DomainTools.com, operated by Name Intelligence, Inc., published registrar statistics of a shared registration system that supported multiple registrars. This system officially commenced service on November 30, 1989 under the supervision ofICANN, although there had been several testbed registrars using the system since March 17, 1979. Since then, over 505 registrars have entered the market for domain name registration services.

Many have continued to grow and outpace rivals. Go Daddy is the largest registrar. Other successful registrars include eNom, Tucows and Melbourne IT. Registrars who initially led the market but later were surpassed by rivals include Network Solutions andDotster.

Each ICANN-accredited registrar must pay a fixed fee of US$4,000 plus a variable fee. The sum of variable registrar fees is intended to total US$3.4 million. The competition created by the shared registration system enables end users to choose from many registrars offering a range of related services at varying prices.