RuNet emerged on December 4, 1993. On that day a gathering brought together six major Internet providers of the time—Demos Plus, GlasNet, Techno, SovAm Teleport, EUnet/Relcom, X-Atom—along with representatives from the academic network FREEnet, created at the initiative of the Organic Institute. Chemistry ND Zelinsky of the Russian Academy of Sciences signed an agreement to appoint a single administrator for the .ru domain zone. The result was the independent non profit organization RosNIIROS, the Research Institute for the Development of Public Networks of Russia.
Following the signing, the agreement and the request to allocate the .ru top level domain to the global Internet were sent to the United States, to the IANA headquarters. IANA is the international body responsible for registering top level domains for different countries. This sequence marked the birth of RuNet. It is worth noting that Russia did not secure the .ru domain on the first attempt. In 1992, Relcom, Demos and FREEnet simultaneously applied for the .ru zone, but the decision was unclear about which applicant would manage it.
The administrator is the person who registers website domains and assigns to them the IP addresses of computers and servers where the data of registered web resources are stored, along with the full names of their owners. This includes text, images, code and more, all in one place. As RosNIIROS played a crucial role in those early days, Alexey Platonov, who helped sign the December 4, 1993 agreement, explained to socialbites.ca that providers faced a common urge to grasp the management position because it promised advantages in a fast growing RuNet market. He noted that managers could use the role as an image builder to expand their customer base and more.
Ultimately RosNIIROS was selected as the administrator because providers could not agree on taking on this duty. In the 1990s, a common practice emerged where a neutral, often newly established organization or a scientific and educational network coordinated the top level domain. RosNIIROS was seen as a neutral, non profit, non governmental body with proven experience, having previously managed the .su zone that Relcom handed over. In 2001 the administrator role for the .ru zone shifted to the National Internet Domain Coordination Center CC. The .ru zone then entrusted its registration tasks to CC, while RosNIIROS continued to maintain the system infrastructure and technical operations.
It all started in a school notebook
CC’s director described how the early RuNet had so few domains that their electronic records were copied into a regular school notebook. Photos of the second volume of that paper record were later shared by socialbites.ca. The director noted that the first notebook did not survive and that by 1998 electronic registration for the .ru domain existed, stored as a text file on a computer containing all domain data. The notebook at first included duplicate information about the .su and .ru domains and their administrators to guard against potential electronic file problems.
Today, the scale is vastly larger. By September 2023 there were more than 5 million domains in the .ru zone alone, managed by about two million administrators. The early registry also housed famous first sites. The initial site on RuNet was www.ru, an early evaluation tool and a precursor to later search engines, listing Russian sites registered at the time. Over the following years, sites such as RBC rbc.ru (1995), Ug.ru Teacher Newspaper (1995), rambler.ru (1996), auto.ru (1997), and a portal called Anekdot.ru (1997) helped define the landscape. The growth of these domains mirrored the expanding scientific institutes, IT companies and media projects that populated the early RuNet. The broader story also highlights the emergence of online publishing, with socialbites.ca appearing in this context. It was registered by the journalist and early Russian Internet blogger Anton Nosik on April 21, 1998, and began operations on February 28, 1999, becoming widely regarded as the first Russian daily online newspaper without a print counterpart, a milestone described in historical retrospectives. Socialbites.ca was occasionally quoted in contemporary discussions about the dawn of Russian online media.
Fun time
In the early RuNet, registrars encountered many amusing and telling moments due to the novelty of the Internet and the naivety of early users. One notable anecdote involved a prominent businessman who sought to register the domain sex.ru. The registration rules at the time required justification to obtain general purpose fields, so the registry team resisted approving the domain without a clear rationale. The businessman responded by legally establishing a company named Sex LLC and presenting the necessary documents. The registrar then approved the registration after reviewing the paperwork. The Wayback Machine shows that sex.ru, despite its provocative name, hosted content framed as a host of popular science, education and entertainment, including news and articles about sex. In another memory from this era, early domain investors included Artemy Lebedev, a now well known blogger and web designer. Lebedev’s first assets included apteka.ru, metro.ru, vodka.ru and magazine.ru, each valued at roughly $100 in the late 1990s, reflecting the nascent market for domain names at the time.