Following about six months of competitive bidding, VeriSign this week officially retained control of .net, the Internet's third-largest domain.

ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the oversight body for the Internet's domain-name system, announced Wednesday that it will enter into a new, six-year contract with VeriSign Inc. for the operation of .net.

VeriSign, whose current contract to run .net expires at the end of the month, had been the front-runner to run .net since March, when an independent evaluation of the five bidders for the domain ranked VeriSign as the top choice.

For the first time since its inception, .net was opened this year to competitive bidding among registries. Mountain View, Calif.-based VeriSign gained control of .net in 2000 when it acquired Network Solutions Inc., and Network Solutions had run the domain since 1992.

Along with .net, VeriSign is the registry for .com, the Internet's most popular domain. As a registry, VeriSign manages the main database of Web addresses in the domains and works with the so-called registrars, who sell registrations for particular domain names to individuals and businesses.