Domain name registry
Domaining Guide
Domain name registry
Home
Up
Domain name registrar
Domain name drop list
Domain tasting
Reverse domain hijacking
Domain name warehousing
A domain name registry, also called Network Information
Centre (NIC), is part of the
Domain Name System (DNS) of the
Internet which converts
domain names to IP addresses. It is an organisation that manages the registration of Domain names within
the
top-level domains for which it is responsible, controls the policies
of domain name allocation, and technically operates its top-level
domain.
Domain names are managed under a hierarchy headed by the
Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), which manages the top of the DNS
tree by administrating the data in the root nameservers.
IANA also operates the .int registry for intergovernmental organisations, the
.arpa zone for protocol administration purposes, and other critical zones such
as root-servers.net.
IANA delegates all other domain name authority to other domain name
registries such as VeriSign.
Country code top-level domains (ccTLD) are delegated by IANA to national
registries such as DENIC in Germany, or Nominet in the United Kingdom.
Operation
Some name registries are government departments (e.g., the registry for the
Vatican
www.nic.va ). Some are co-operatives of internet service providers (such as
DENIC) or not-for profit companies (such as Nominet UK).
Others operate as commercial organizations, such as the US registry (www.nic.us).
The allocated and assigned domain names are made available by registries by
use of the Whois system and via their Domain name servers.
Some registries sell the names directly (like SWITCH in Switzerland) and others rely solely on
registrars to sell them.
Policies
Allocation policies
Generally, domain name registries operate a
first-come-first-served system of allocation but may reject the allocation
of specific domains on the basis of political, religious, historical, legal or
cultural reasons.
For example, in the United States, between
1996 and 1998, InterNIC
automatically rejected domain name applications based on a list of perceived
obscenities.
Registries may also control matters of interest to their local communities:
for example, the German, Japanese and Polish registries have introduced
internationalized domain names to allow use of local non-ASCII characters.
Dispute policies
Domains which are registered with ICANN generally have to use the Uniform
Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP), however, DENIC requires people to
use the German civil courts, and Nominet UK deals with Intellectual Property and other disputes through its own dispute resolution
service.
Cost of registration
The cost of domain registration is set by each individual registry.
Second-level domains
Domain name registries may also impose a system of
second-level domains on users. DENIC, the registry for Germany (.de), does
not impose second level domains. AFNIC, the registry for France (.fr), has some
second level domains, but not all registrants have to use them, and Nominet UK,
the registry for the United Kingdom (.uk), requires all names to have a second level domain.
Registrants of second-level domains sometimes act as a registry by offering
sub-registrations to their registration. For example, registrations to .fami.ly
are offered by the registrant of fami.ly and not by GPTC, the registry for Libya
(.ly).
See also
External links
Home
Up
Domain name
Hostname
Fully qualified domain name
Internationalized domain name
Subdomain
Domain name registry
WHOIS
This guide is licensed under the GNU
|