Today, December 7th at 11.00 CET will see the strat of issuance of .eu domain names by EURid. It will be quite fun to watch, as it will be a kill or be killed event between trademark and company name holders in different countries and trade mark groups. The first period where prior rights owners can apply is called “the Sunrise Period” and especially sexy is the open to everyone period from April 7th, called “the Landrush Period.”
Everything is built on first come first served principle, meaning hundreds of registrants will start spamming the central register at 11.00. At least some time ago the EURid official documents said that this will definitely create a system overload, but at the same time create a positive “randomizing effect.” That means basically it is a lottery. It will be interesting to follow EURid website to see who gets to grab what. I have bought some tickets as well 😉
[edit] Like expected, the system grinded to a halt in first minutes, becoming either very slow or saying the system is unavailable. It was known in advance what kind of load there will be. It is neither rocket science nor prohibitively costly nowadays to build systems which can stand high peak loads.